A constructivist humanistic approach to the teaching of language through literature: "Whole person"

IV ABSTRACT This study aims to present an approach to the teaching of foreign language in respect to the constructİvist and holistic paradigm in education. To achieve this end, this thesis suggests that the use of literary texts in language classrooms provides rich, motivating and authentic material for the language learners, as literature encourages individuals to respond to the text, making the text their own and supports contextual learning, which is proposed as the main principle of learning by the constructivist and holistic education philosophies. Besides linguistic benefits that the learners would gain from being exposed to the best use of language, this thesis claims that the use of literary texts nurtures the cultural and individual development of the language learners. In this respect, literature's contribution to language teaching bridges a gap between the traditional methodology and the implications of constructivist understanding in education. Furthermore, as discussed in the long history of literary criticism, literature is a unique field of study in forming open-minded individuals, who have developed certain critical awareness to both the universal and day-to-day issues. Combining the precept with the particular example, literature acts more directly to this end than any other field of knowledge by opening awareness and susceptibility. By detecting the depicted values in the literary texts reader/learners develop attitudes towards them and consequently they define or redefine their own values. As suggested in this study the most suitable way to succeed in such an attitude of learning is the application of reader response theory of reading literature and this naturally has certain implications both on the part of teacher and classroom procedures. In this thesis these implications and suggestions are also accompanied by a series of sample lesson plans in order to demonstrate the use of literary texts in language classrooms in practice.