The benefits of using world literature for globalizing English in the ESL classroom

Sammanfattning: Although the focus on English as a global language is apparent in the Swedish curriculum today, many educators do not take advantage of world literature and non-native English authors in their ESL classrooms. With the help of empirical research, we investigate the benefits of using such literature for gaining global awareness. Furthermore, we analyze the activities and teaching approaches used in the empirical studies. Through this essay, we summarize the empirical research used for this essay and synthesize the results to find out what implications were found. It shows that using non-native fiction helps students to learn and explore different cultures, which also expands their global view. Apart from this, teaching methods such as discussions, literature circles, presentations, blogging and collaborative learning deepened students' global view and cultural awareness. The teaching methods that were used while working with world literature showed that students were conscious of their own learning and developed this ability by working in a social environment. This paper concludes with describing the limitations of writing the study, and presents a future research project that involves the field of world literature.