Includes bibliographical references.

"The title of this volume, SLA and the Literature Classroom: Fostering Dialogues, challenges us to establish communication between two groups. The identity of each of these groups, however, is not immediately apparent. The first group, SLA (second language acquisition), is particularly vague because it has come to include researchers who explore how a second language is acquired (both in the field and in the classroom), specialists in foreign language (FL) teaching and learning (K-16), and finally university teaching assistant (TA) supervisors.' While our use of the term SLA includes all of these roles, we are particularly concerned with American university professors who teach foreign languages and FL methodology courses and who supervise graduate TAs. With regard to the second group, namely those included in the reference to "the literature classroom," we consider them to be American university professors of foreign language literature with a wide variety of training, approaches, and fields of research. In most institutions, these two groups operate quite independently and have different responsibilities. Occasionally, literature professors may teach language in particular, professors at four-year liberal arts colleges. The converse, however, is rarely the case; SLA practitioners do not generally teach literature. So, the two groups, often housed within a single department, operate separately.

The divisions between SLA and literature are not superficial. Rather, they may be as profound as the divisions between colleges of education and programs in the liberal arts, between the natural sciences and the humanities, between those who value applied research and those who honor research in theoretical domains. This division cuts through to how "real intellectualism" is defined: Do real intellectuals wrestle with concrete and practical phenomena? Or do they grapple with abstract and transcendent notions?

At the heart of these debates lies an unspoken belief that, in the academy, the two groups are divided into second-class citizens and the "elite." The second class citizens, or members of the SLA group, may have clear ideas about what is involved in learning/acquiring and teaching FL; the elite, or the literature group, may wish to preserve their place among their colleagues in disciplines such as English and Philosophy. While the division between SLA and literature practitioners has many dimensions -- ideological (how we think about issues),
linguistic (how we talk about issues), and/or curricular (how we conceive of the teaching enterprise), there is no doubt that these two groups are united in their shared commitment to students. As we look for a new professional discourse that will allow us to transcend disciplinary territorialism, we should keep in mind that students in foreign-language departments are, at any level, language learners. Whether in the lower-level classroom or the literature classroom, teachers guide their students in an exploration of how meanings are expressed and communicated through a target language. This common focus on language and language learners is, in our view, where the dialogue must begin." (Introduction, p. ix-x)

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

RENEWED DEBATES

The Gordian Knot: Language, Literature, and Critical Thinking / Jean Marie Schultz

COLLEAGUES IN DIALOGUE

Developing Literacy and Literary Comptence: Challenges for Foreign Language Departments / Heidi Byrnes and Susanne Kord

Crossing the Boundaries Between Literature and Pedagogy: Perspectives on a Foreign Language Reading Course / Joanne Burnett and Leah Fonder-Solano

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND PEDAGOGY

Rethinking Foreign Language Literature: Towards an Integration of Literature and Language at All Levels / Diana Frantzen

Reading the Patterns of Literary Works: Strategies and Teaching Techniques / Janet Swaffar

Teaching Literary Texts at an Intermediary Level: A Structured Input Approach / Stacey Katz

A Stylistic Approach to Foreign Language Acquisition and Literary Analysis / William Berg and Laurey K. Martin-Berg

FROM SCHOLAR TO TEACHER

Research into the Teaching of Literature in a Second Language: What it Says and How to Communicate it to Graduate Students / Elizabeth Bernhardt

About the Contributors