Literature: An Appropriate Tool for Teaching Language to Iranian Learners

A foreign language teaching method is supposed to take into account the real communicative needs of the foreign language learner. Using literary texts is a suitable way not only to teach a foreign language but to consider particular facts that relate to human and cultural needs of learners. Using the humanistic-oriented literary texts as an authentic document in the foreign language course allows learners to develop their affective and creative motivations, causing also potential effects on language teaching qualities. Literary texts are a reflection of social facts and they can effectively be sufficient means to transmit the linguistic subtleties in a foreign language course. A Literary text forms an outstanding cultural aspect of a society and its methodological application in a foreign language course may accommodate the language learning process by means of presentation of fine cultural points of the target society that could enable the language learner to become competent and useful in his social being-ness. On the other hand, the Iranian learner is, and has been, in constant contact with his own literary culture; this latent contact makes him naturally inclined to an untroubled connection with the literary texts in the target language. This article will address the above issues.