The influence of literary texts on the improvement of students' language skills in Italian language teaching as a foreign language

This thesis has been written in order to identify the influence of using literary texts, in Italian language teaching as a foreign language, on the improvement of students' four basic language skills and their intregrated language skills. To do so, the historical development of language teaching, the characteristics of literary texts which make them usable as language teaching materials within the psychological, sociological, cultural, socio-cultural, socio-emotional and language skill improvement framework have been discussed. After giving some general information about the historical development of Italian Literature starting from the period in which the Italian language became a national language, the types of literary texts which can be used as language teaching materials have been indicated; language skills and language teaching techniques which can be applied on literary texts have been described; a brief description has been given about the foreign language levels presented by Council of Europe in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and some teaching activities have been prepared for Turkish students by applying language teaching techniques on some authentic literary texts chosen for each foreign language level. Besides, a questionnaire addressed to the teachers who teach Italian as a foreign language has been prepared in order to confirm the hypothesis that the use of literary texts, in Italian language teaching as a foreign language, contributes to the improvement of the four basic language skills and the integrated language skills and consequently some data that confirm the abovementioned hypothesis have been obtained.