AVA2 Literatura Estadunidense

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Universidade Veiga de Almeida
Giannini Bousquet Orlando
Trabalho da Disciplina
Literatura Estadunidense
Rio de Janeiro
 2022
U.S. Literature and ELT: challenges and convergences.
Throughout this subject, you have studied different approaches to U.S. Literature – from the classical/canonic view to the more recent representations of minority communities in academic studies. Our purpose was to offer theoretical knowledge and practical understanding on how English teachers can take advantage of U.S. Literature to propose challenging, motivating, and linguistically relevant classes. We see literature as a privileged resource for language development. Therefore, English teachers can benefit from working with literary texts in the classroom.
Imagine that you are a teacher who needs to write a project defending the inclusion of U.S. literary texts into your English language classes at school. The project will be presented to the school’s coordinator and director for approval. You need to show that you are prepared to deal with the complexities of the texts you select by presenting solid arguments and a strong theoretical background.
1. Select two of the approaches to U.S. Literature studied here (Classical, African American, Asian American, Native American, Chicano and/or Queer).
2. Write an introduction (5-10 lines), stating the importance of your project and presenting the two selected approaches.
3. Write a development (10-15 lines), commenting on the relevance of each approach to ELT. Do not forget to mention at least two of the theoretical concepts studied throughout the course (one per approach).
4. Write a conclusion (5-10 lines) indicating some activities that you could propose to your students in general lines.
5. You can create a title for your project and include illustrative text excerpts (not mandatory).
6. Do not forget to decide on which grades this project will attend.
	The current standard for English classes generally revolves solely on grammar rules, which couldn’t be more wrong. Studying a language is also a social study as to truly understand said language, we need to take a deep dive on the cultures it originated from. This is exactly why including English literacy on classes can be beneficial for students as it provides them context to the language and can also serves as tools to help them put the grammar rules they’ve been studying into different realities. When studying the English language through only a grammar perspective, we’re only studying it to what is referred as the white (media-based) standards. In this presentation, we’ll be briefly exploring English as a language throughout the African American and Asian American perspectives.
	To this day African and Asian American Literatures are still widely overlooked, even more so when it comes to ESL. While the classic and canonic approaches were vital for the formation of the U.S as a nation, the African and Asian American literature have been just as important to the formation of the contemporary English that we have today. Like Portuguese in that regard, English language variants have been targets for a lot of language prejudice (especially for ELT). While not as much for the Asian side, as they tend to use vernacular (which is already adopted by most ELT institutions), the African American side of things still suffers a lot of language prejudice for being “incorrect”. By now, these “slangs” have been part of English and for such a wide community that it is expected for students to be able to understand them if they want to attain English native fluency. 
Analyzing and exploring African American literary might give us a lot of context and put us into perspective from where these terms came to be. The African American Literature is commonly composed by two underlying themes: The quest for freedom and the quest for literacy. As the black population had to face both linguistic exclusion and being forbidden from learning, they were to create their own identity throughout their literature.
As for the Asian American side of things, these populations had their identities erased as they suffered from a lot of institutionalized invisibilization and discrimination. But their influence on English literary can be felt from the Japanese poems to even Asian stylized storytelling. Said storytelling style is even more popular now with the internet. To the point that even American showrunners tries to mimic it.
Going back to the parallels made with Portuguese, these can be useful when it comes to teaching English. As there are many activities that can correlate these linguistic variants to facilitate the understanding of English as a language (ideally for 8th and 9th graders, as they should be somewhat familiarized with grammar rules as of now). In conclusion, this presentation should be enough to provide evidence on how beneficial for students it would be to use English literary on classes. As they dive deeper and deeper on the social study of the language, the easier it’ll become to attain the so called “native fluency”.
Referências:
MOURA, Sabine Mendes Lima. Literatura Estadunidense [e-Book]. Rio de Janeiro: UVA, 2020.