The purpose of this paper is to reconsider reading classical Literature in university classrooms. Literature has been considered unsuitable for teaching and learning English language, due to its syntactic and lexical difficulty and its old and outdated vocabulary not practiced in today’s English. Although many educators have realized that literature could provide the pleasure of learning a new language through interesting stories and poems, one of the main concerns in language learning classrooms is said to be the lack of authenticity of teaching materials, which can put students at a disadvantage when faced with real-world situations. This paper focuses on reading classical early modern poetry which seems to be outdated for the learners, considering how to connect it with the learners’ real-world situations in the classroom.
Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, active learning, literature for EFL/ESL, real-world situation, transformative competence
