Literature Learning in the Malaysian ESL Classroom: A UiTM Experience

Clearly, the use of literature has been acknowledged as conducive to academic, intellectual, cultural and linguistic learning (Sage, 1987; Spack, 1985). [...]in a literature integrated language instruction, learners are exposed to the spiritual, aesthetic and moral values that are inherent in the nation.s social system as national culture is often reflected in its literature (Spack, 1985). Since the sampling was not randomized, we used non-parametric tests to elicit this information, namely the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test and the Mann-Whitney U test. [...]the pretest result shows the mean ranks (scores) difference between the two groups was not significant (z = -1.090, N = 30, p > 0.05), suggesting that the subjects of both the control and experimental groups belong to the same level in terms of their language proficiency before the treatment phase. [...]the null hypothesis (Ho1b) that says there is no difference between the experimental group and the control group in the posttest performance ought to be rejected. [...]the pretest result shows the mean ranks (scores) difference between the two groups was not significant (z = -0.366, N = 30, p > 0.05), suggesting that the subjects of both the control and experimental groups belong to the same level in terms of the language structure occurrences before the treatment phase. [...]the null hypothesis (Ho2b) that says there is no difference between the experimental group and the control group in the posttest performance ought to be rejected. Since the goal of ESL teaching is to help students to communicate fluently in the target language, instructors must diversify their focus of attention to not only include linguistic aspects but also other benefits such as creativity and cultural aspects.