I.S.F.D n°30 Profesor: Bals Biggati
Alumna: Laura Paola Vellere
Santa Felicitas´ Church: learning a foreign language with a local legend Many doubts arise among teachers of EFL (English as a foreign language), such as: whether students really engage to the material or whether the fact of empathizing with the material is meaningful for students. If we work with teenagers, in my own experience as teacher, these doubts are even more usual. It seems as if any activity that teachers propose is not worth trying to do. But yeachers cannot fail when choosing a material if they inquire student’s interests, that is to say, what they really like doing. From this gather of information about students´ interests, teachers will find a lot of ideas to plan their lessons in order to engage them. Literature for young adults (YAL) could be a good idea to be used within EFL classrooms because it deals with issues related to adolescents’ life or experiences. Furthermore, it is even better if the YAL material selected by the teacher is close to the students’ culture, as it is proposed by CLIL approach (Content and language integrated learning). When the foreign language is integrated to other themes belonging to the students´ culture the material becomes relevant for them and therefore the learning is much more beneficial. Considering the ideas pointed out above, The Argentinean urban legend about Felicitas´ ghost (Appendix 1) is an excellent material to use with teenagers in the EFL classroom since it can be classify as YAL and it follows CLIL approach. As a YAL story, young readers may identify with the main character´s feelings and suffering. Felicitas, a young girl, had a tragic end. She was deeply in love with a man but she was courted by another man too. The rejected man couldn´t accept Felicitas decision and killed her. Choosing the material Taking into account Robert Small´s ideas (as cited in Sarah Herz an Gallo, Donald, 1996) about YAL, there should be certain characteristics in a piece of literature in order to classify it as young adult literature. Some of those characteristics are: • The main character is a teenager. • The main character is the centre of the plot. • The main character is usually perceptive, sensitive, intelligent, mature and independent.