Teaching Ethnic Minority Cultures in the EFL Classroom. A Proposition of a New Focus on Contemporary Coming-of-Age Novels

Claudia Haller

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Examination Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, http://www.u...

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Examination Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Anglistik), language: English, abstract: 21st century teachers are faced with a huge amount of various challenges in their classrooms concerning the teaching of the English language in a contemporary manner. And it is the little adjective "contemporary" that is crucial in this context. This thesis takes a closer look at the importance of post-colonial and minority literature in the EFL classroom as minorities within a culture become more and more omnipresent in a 21st century society. For many decades, teaching the works of William Shakespeare has been one of the core elements within the literary education in the EFL classroom. And, to be more precise, Shakespeare and his oeuvre are part of the so-called literary canon which is a collection of works that have been considered as highly valuable and of particular significance during a certain period of time. It includes primarily the works of dead white European male (DWEM) as well as white Anglo-Saxon protestants (WASP) authors. Noteworthy are the writings of Arthur Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Golding and many others that are still part of the literary canon discussed at (German) schools. It is recognized that the works of the preceding authors are definitely not contemporary writers in the sense of "having published anything since 2005". However, it is not the aim of this paper to criticize the works of the common literary canon since all of them offer manifold approaches to classic and valuable English literature and represent high cultural artefacts of Anglophone culture(s). Instead, an alternative canon of contemporary coming-of-age-novels is presented, including such works as Sandra Cisnero's "The House on Mango Street" and Junot Diáz' "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao".