Integrated Language and Literary Approach to LSP Teaching (On the Examples of the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller)
Integrated Language and Literary Approach to LSP Teaching (On the Examples of the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller)

Summary/Abstract: Literature can be a great source of creativity in the process of LSP teaching, motivating both instructors and students to explore and ignite their imagination, while also widening the scope of the instruments and methods of language practice. This paper aims to explore the possibilities of incorporating certain elements of literary analysis into LSP classes, using the example of material from two plays that have the common topics of money, gaining or losing capital, and the moral aspects of wealth. They are The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. As is shown, an integrated approach not only offers learners opportunities to develop their linguistic competence and communicative skills, but also enhances their cultural awareness, which is becoming even more important in contemporary multicultural classrooms. These three major aspects of the integrated approach to LSP teaching – language, speech and cultural – are given special attention in the paper. Both The Merchant of Venice and Death of a Salesman are abundant in business idiomatic expressions and culture-specific issues. Therefore, by analyzing the semantics of these idiomatic expressions in literary, authentic texts, learners can adopt and explore real language in context. The wide scope of topics developed in the The Merchant of Venice and Death of a Salesman offers an excellent opportunity for various speech exercises that can be organized in class and presuppose the students’ use of the active lexical items from the field of Business English. As is stated in the paper, by reading and discussing literary texts in language classes, students learn to understand other cultures and societies, which is of paramount importance in the multicultural milieu of the modern world.

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