Using Short Stories in Teaching English for Engineering Students

Abstract

It is an indisputable fact that English language proficiency and communicative competence are indispensable for all the students to excel in the professional and personal fronts. Language Teaching through Literature has become a topic of research in the 20th century. Many researchers accept that literature is great tool to teach  language to the foreign learners. But a few are sceptical about the use of Literature in enriching the Language Proficiency of the students. They raised some objections against the use of literature in  schools and colleges due to overcrowded classes, overloaded syllabus and limited time. The answer for this is the short story which lends itself to effective classroom use for the integration of multiple skills due to its brevity, variety,  simplicity and short narrative. It s benefits are manifold while using it in the classroom. It involves the learners  emotinally, critically and intellectually captivating their attention.  This paper examines the use of short stories in teaching English language to the engineering students and the advantages of using short story in the classes. It suggests the selection criteria of  the short story in terms of the age of  the students and how to make the students work with the material. while showing how to exploit a short story to develop language skills, a series  class room activities are discussed for the benefit of the language teachers taking a short story ‘The Power of a Plate of Rice’ as an example. Short stories serve the purpose of teaching not only language skills but also multiple other skills like creative thinking, imagination,  problem solving skills, team spirit, confidence, cultural tolerance and empathy.