La enseñanza de la lengua española a partir de los textos literariosanálisis del discurso de la narrativa fantástica del siglo XIX.

Résumé

The rise and the use of a communicative approach in foreign language teaching, coupled with the support of the advantages attached to it by certain researchers, linguists and Englishspeaking teachers (Widdowson, Brumfit and Carter, Collie and Slater, Lazar, etc.), as well as the interest shown in the processes involved in reading comprehension, certainly led to the return and use of literature in the language classroom, since it started to be considered as authentic material as well as a profitable teaching resource. With regard to Spanish language teaching to foreigners, a number of interesting studies and research projects has been conducted in recent years on the use of literary texts. Yet, few works are available at the publishing market that actually meet the needs of both students and teachers. Spanish nineteenth-century fantasy literature shares a long period of neglect with the actual use of literature in the Spanish language classroom. Studies on literary history and critics virtually ignored it as they would not consider it “quality literature”, with the exception of fantasy works by Becquer and Espronceda. Literature is, above all, a linguistic discourse with both esthetic and communicative purposes, while fantasy literature is a fiction genre that is usually fascinating among readers as works present a captivating profile with mysteries to unfold. The charm of the fantasy genre goes in line with the appealing history of its origins, the literary trends that it was associated with and its development over the nineteenth century. Therefore, the objective of this PhD dissertation is to prove that a course can be developed that combines Spanish language and nineteenth-century fantasy literature with a communicative and meaningful approach. For this purpose, a methodology has been implemented which is different from other methods used so far, and a course syllabus has been drafted to include ten learning units. In order to carry out this project and to find a methodology that combined linguistic, literary and cultural content teaching, extensive theoretical research has been conducted. Furthermore, some of the learning units were implemented with a group of Spanish language and literature students. As a result of the data obtained, it can be concluded that Spanish nineteenth-century fantasy literature offers novel, appealing and rewarding material for Spanish teaching from a linguistic, literary, cultural and historical perspective. At the same time, it is an extremely valuable resource to develop activities that encourage creativity and team work, as well as to improve performance on communicative skills, especially reading and writing