Literature in Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL): A journey from its early stages to the XXI century

Abstract

. Literature has experienced significant ups and downs in terms of its presence and prominence in the most relevant methods and approaches followed in the process of teaching-learning languages from its beginnings to present times. In some of them, literature has played an important role (Grammar Translation Method), while it has been clearly ignored in others (natural methods, structural methods) or it has been received with a certain coolness, at least in its beginnings (communicative approach). In this paper, a diachronic tour is taken regarding the relationship between methodologies and literature in teaching a second language, at the same time that its function and treatment is analized in the complete series of eight current Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) textbooks. The analyzed variables are the number of literary texts related to the number of didactic units and to the levels of The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), the degree of integration of literary texts into those units and the type of exploitation proposed. The results show that the steps taken compared to other times are important, but that the literary texts are quite often still conceived as very suitable resources to be introduced in sections of a complementary nature instead of being fully integrated in the didactic units.