I began teaching English in the early 1990s when this language had just started to be taught in Poland on a broad scale. British publishing houses were just en­tering Polish market with their expensive, colourful and attractively looking course-books. Learners and teachers of English were delighted. Although learn­ing English became ‘an expensive treat’, they no longer had to use paperback, black and white course books by Joanna Smolska or Anna Zawadzka.

After four or five years of teaching English from the course-books published by British publishing houses, I came to the conclusion that they promoted British culture to a lesser extent that those old-fashioned course-books published in Po­land. For example, in We learn English by Anna Zawadzka - a course-book that had been used in Polish secondary schools from at least the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s - learners could find information about British his­tory, geography of the British Isles, British pop stars and finally everyday life of the British. None of the course-books published in Great Britain comprises such abundance of information about British culture.

In the mid 1990s I was a bit bored with teaching English from the British-published course-books and started to think about introducing something new in my English language classes. The idea of using short stories came to my mind because I remembered myself as a secondary school student who had enjoyed tremendously listening to short stories by British and American writers broad­cast at that time by Polish Radio. Those were the programmes aiming to teach English therefore the stories were read in English. The sense of achievement that I could follow the plot was great. The closeness of the characters, speaking, thinking and feeling in English was another incentive.

Time passed by and I did not have time to put into practice my idea of using short stories in foreign language classes. This project has enabled me to design and carry out the idea postponed for a long time.

At the beginning of the foreign language learning process students are usually ex­posed to various types of simple everyday situations. They learn a certain amount of vocabulary and grammar which allow them to cope and the types of written texts introduced at this early stage are:

·         introductory notes giving information about people and places,

·         travel timetables,

·         city plans,

·         menus,

·         simile application forms,

·         letters of introduction,

·         advertisements, etc.

However, the more advanced the process of learning, the more complex the texts that students encounter. They start to complain that foreign language lessons are not as fun and entertaining as they once used to be. Learners do not understand why they have to read intricate, long texts only to discover particularities of grammar and vocabulary which might not be of any use to them in the future.

The type of texts, often to be found in course books at pre-intermediate to inter­mediate level, are regarded as culture-fee e.g. having no connection with any particular culture because some authors believe that culture-bound texts impede rather than foster language learning. Culture-bound texts are thought to be ‘strange’ to students, to have no relevance to students' own culture or to delib­erately promote other cultures. Therefore what authors of the course books end up with are texts dealing with blended, colourless issues seen as ‘international’ such as environmental problems, worldwide transport, renowned shopping cen­tres, descriptions of international holiday places, accounts of eminent people's lives or extraordinary, unusual events in common people's lives - just to name a few. Follow-up activities are usually constituted of discussions on issues some­how connected with ‘has just read’ texts. Quite often students have very little or nothing to say about them because of the lack of personal involvement.

Carefully chosen literary works seem to be the justifiable supplementary com­ponent for the culture-free texts in the course books. They not only possess such merits as enhancing students' motivation, encouraging language acquisition and expounding language awareness, that especially prepared texts in course books are lacking, but they also develop cultural awareness and critical thinking - the features crucial in cultural studies promoted in foreign language teaching over the last decade by such authors as Byram (1989), Kramsch (1993) or Lazar (1993).

Languages are "the products of particular histories … to represent a lan­guage as an abstract code and language learning as purely a matter of master­ing a different code is to deprive learner of whole domains of knowledge and understanding'' (Pulverness 2000). While investigating other cultures, students learn about new values, meanings and symbols. They compare and contrast these with the ones present in their own culture. The process of comparing and contrasting make foreign language learning involving and motivating. Students gain "access to a different way of seeing the world" (Pulverness 2000) and re-evaluate their views of the world.

The raising of student motivation by literature stems from the fact that literary texts are authentic material which "exposes students to complex theme and fresh, un­expected use of language" (Lazar, 1993: 15). This helps them to become imaginatively engaged with literature and, according to Collie and Slater (1987:5):

...shifts the focus of their attention beyond the more mechanical as­pects of the foreign language system. When a novel, a play or short story is explored over a period of time, the result is that the reader be­gins to ‘inhibit’ the text. He or she is drawn into the book. Pinpoint­ing what individual words or phrases may mean becomes less impor­tant than perusing the development of the story. The reader is eager to find out what happens as events unfold; he or she feels close to certain characters and shares their emotional responses. The language be­comes ‘transparent’ - the fiction summons the whole person into its own world.

Once students become emotionally involved in the text, they find it easy to dis­cuss and share their feelings and opinions. Literary texts are rich in multiple lev­els of meaning. Readers develop interpretative abilities to infer these meanings; each individual reader may find his/her own personal response to the text. Therefore feelings and opinions evoked in readers may be quite similar or con­tradictory, which gives way to fruitful discussions. For example Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield - a short story about a lonely, old woman who spends her Sunday afternoons in the park, watching the crowd and listening to other people talk, may evoke in a reader the feeling of compassion or the feeling of anger about trespassing privacy of others.

To sum up, literature should be use in a foreign language teaching to increase the motivation to read, encourage to interpret texts, to talk about aroused feel­ings and opinions. These facts add to language acquisition and language aware­ness but also, more important for cultural studies, develop cultural awareness and critical thinking.

When starting discussion about the links between literature and culture, it is es­sential to define the both. There are various ways to do this, but for the explora­tion of the theme of this project which is, as stated in the title ‘the cultural use of short stories in language teaching’, I confine to the brief definition of culture which is "the values, traditions and social practices of a particular group" Lazar (1993: 16) seems to be suitable because these values, traditions and social practices can be investi­gated in literature. The latter can be defined as "the question minus the an­swer" (Roland Barthes, New York Times, 1978). Such a definition of literature implies that "our main aim when using literature with our students is to help them unravel the many meanings in a text. Students often need guidance when exploring these multiple levels of meaning in a literary text - we need to devise materials and tasks which help them to do this" (Lazar, 1993:3).

The above given definition of literature suggests that it is impossible to reach any definite interpretation of literary texts. They would rather be used to raise questions, initiate discussions, inspire feelings and emotions. Such an approach to literature, while investigating culture incorporated in it, is justified because literature as work of fiction only partially represents the reality and factual documentation. Therefore the approach to culture represented in literary work should always be critical that means taking into consideration the fact that cul­ture in literature is seen from the writer point of view. His/her experience and knowledge influence the culture he/she presents in his/her literary work.

Nevertheless, it is worth taking the effort to investigate culture included in lit­erature, especially if there are no other ways of doing it. For ex­ample, foreign language learners might never have a chance to visit for an ex­tended period of time the society of which language they are learning. For the same reasons reading literary works routed in a certain history period, gives the flavour of this period.

The short stories chosen for this project were written by authors living in Eng­land at the beginning of the 20^th century, thus these stories reflect some aspects of culture of this period. In Miss Brill a park scene on Sunday afternoon is presented in the following way:

To and fro, in front of the flower-beds and the band rotunda, the couples and groups paraded, stopped to talk, to greet, to buy a hand­ful of flowers from the old beggar who had his tray fixed to the rail­ings. Little children ran among them, swooping and laughing. Other people sat on the benches and green chairs, [...]. Two young girls in red came by and two soldiers in blue met them, and they laughed and paired and went off arm in arm. Two peasant women with funny straw hats passed, gravely, leading beautiful smoke-coloured donkeys. A cold pale nun hurried by.

While reading this passage, readers immediately catch up such ‘pictures’ as an old beggar selling flowers from his tray or two peasant women with funny straw hats leading donkeys. They recognize them as ‘pictures’ belonging to the past, which can't be seen nowadays. Probably another comparison/association comes to readers' minds: they start to think about similarities and differences in the appearance of Polish and English people.

This example illustrates the way students gain cultural awareness and compe­tence through reading literature. The process of reading and thinking about the content of the text makes readers become interested in the author, his/ her life and work, the historical and cultural background to the story. Readers start to search for the information that will satisfy their curiosity. Thus, this is a way to raise investigatory cultural awareness. On the whole, literature and culture are inseparable. Getting acquainted with lit­erature foster the process of becoming familiar with culture.

Short stories are a rewarding genre to introduce literature and at the same time culture in the foreign-language classroom. Because of its length, students are able to finish reading a short story within a short period of time and activities based on a short story can be completed in a few lessons. This way students can find satisfaction and a sense of achievement - feelings that can be compared to those readers experience when dealing with literary texts in their native language, though in some ways stronger because literary texts are written in a foreign language.

The variety of themes embraced in short stories enables a teacher to choose the scope of themes involving individual students. The choice of the stories for this project has been made partly on the basis of the sources available for the author of the project, but with usefulness for cultural studies he decisive factor. It resulted in the following list:

·         A Cup of Tea and Miss Brill - Katherine Mansfield

·         The Open Window and Dusk - Hector Hugh Munro (Saki)

·         The Model Millionaire - Oscar Wilde

·         Acme - John Galsworthy

·         News of the Engagement - Arnold Bennett

All class activities have been designed in order to emphasize lifestyles, customs and social relations. Since all the chosen stories were written at the beginning of the 20^th century, contrasting these aspects now (at the begin­ning of the 21^st) is the basis for the design of the activities.

The aims of the lessons based on the chosen stories and the development of cul­tural awareness are listed below.

1. While exploring A Cup of Tea the following issues are discussed:

·         upper/lower class lifestyles in the early twenties in Britain,

·         the status of upper-class women in contrast to lower-class in the early twenties,

·         the presence of the social classes in contemporary societies in Britain and in Poland.

2. Miss Brill brings to the classroom the issue of old age and loneliness in Britain. This might be compared with the same issue in Poland which is even more present now than it was one hundred years ago.
3. The Open Window enables students to come closer with the importance of hunting in Britain, deeply rooted in British tradition. It also allows the explora­tion of a lack of concern and understanding on part of young people towards adult problems as well as their desire to show their abilities even at the expense of others. This seems to be cross-cultural phenomena that The Open Window helps to discover.
4. Dusk explores an unchangeable feature of human nature, namely the incli­nation to play tricks on others. While people who often become victims of de­ception try to defend themselves, being a prey is sometimes inevitable because swindlers are more lucky.
5. The Model Millionaire just as A Cup of Tea helps to explore lifestyle of upper-class people and social relations within this class at the turn of 19^th and 20^th centuries. While discussing The Model Millionaire, it is worth pointing out how the sense of compassion, possessed by people may help their dreams come true. The activities designed for this story elicit this meaning.
6. Acme deals with the position of writers in Britain one hundred years ago. Through the procedures introduced while presenting this story, students have the chance to explore and compare the position of artists in the past and nowadays.
7. If teachers wish to bring issues of engagement and marriage into the foreign language classroom, the story News of the Engagement is an ideal way. These themes are captivating for secondary school students, thus a great deal of in­volvement on their part is expected while looking at the trend in styles of en­gagement and marriage through time and cross-culturally.

These themes demonstrate that short stories comprise a large quantity of material for cultural studies. The presented range may seem too broad to be covered within three to four weeks with pre-intermediate to intermediate level secondary school students but the main goal of this project is not to explore the themes in great detail but to give students a general idea of various cultural issues.

School and class profile

The project took place in a Liceum with about 500 students all learning English. About two started as absolute beginners. English classes are held twice or three times a week. There are two English language classrooms in the school. The one in which the project took place is equipped with a board, cassette recorder, and video equipment. This classroom also has some books, magazines, and video cassettes providing information about British culture. Among these are the following:

• Diniejko, A. (1999) English-Speaking Countries, Warszawa: WSiP
• Gower, R. (1990) Past into Present. An Anthology of British and American Literature, Longman
• Gower, R. Pearson, M. (1986) Reading Literature, Longman
• Sheerin, S. Seath, J. White, G. (1995) Spotlight on Britain, Oxford: OUP
• Videos: Headway Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate
• Magazines: The World of English (all issues - since 1992) some issues of Anglorama

Thirty students participated, both girls and boys aged 17 to 18, in their third year of learning English. The author has been teaching this class since they started the school and they have worked through Headway Elementary and Pre-Intermediate course-books. The students are ambitious and eager to learn English, but there are some constraints that sometimes unable them to meet the teacher's demands.

Issues in using short stories

Before starting work on the design of the materials, it is worth pinpointing some problems students  have when reading and studying. Here is a list adapted from Literature and Language Teaching by Lazar (1993):

• motivation (lack of confidence, don't read much in own language),
• comprehension (following the plot, understanding the characters, under­standing vocabulary, understanding the role of the narrator),
• understanding the cultural background to the story,
• inadequate reading strategies (tendency to focus on every word rather than general meaning),
• making interpretations (confidence to make own interpretations, coping with ambiguity).

The designed tasks and activities, apart from raising cultural awareness, should help students through these difficulties. For example, the difficulty with understanding the cultural background is overcome in the first lesson which attempts to provide students with historical background of the 20^th century. The lack of motivation to read is dealt with in the second. Students do not have to read the story as its con­tent is presented through drama. While following the plot of the drama, they only have to put the events from the story, given on a slips of paper, in the proper order. This activity is also aimed to develop adequate reading techniques by focusing on the main events in the story rather than the details.

The whole range of activities in the lesson plans is designed to help student make interpretations, comparisons, and cope with ambiguity. For example:

• while discussing A Cup of Tea students are provided with personality ad­jectives to compare Rosemary and the girl,
• before discussion on The Open Window, set in the country, the Headway video ‘The village - King Sutton’ is shown, this presents the changes in the life of the coun­tryside that have taken place since the beginning of the 20^th century,
• interest in reading The Model Millionaire is evoked by a gap-fill exercise, followed by a closer look at the socio-economic relations of the upper-class by comparing the financial situation of Hughie Erskine and his fiancée - Laura Merton,
• before look closely at Acme students gather information about a British art­ist that they admire, then they compare his/her life to Bruce's - a writer and protagonist of the story.

Cultural background to short stories

The lesson is aimed to overcome difficulties connected with understanding the cultural background of the stories. Since all the stories are set at the beginning of the 20^th century, the following historical background is discussed:

• the monarchy,
• social and political movements in Britain,
• inventions,
• social classes present in British society at that time.

Procedure

1.       The students work in groups of three. Each member is given a short text to dictate to other members. The texts provide information about the monarchy, about Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V. After the dictation is completed students analyse the texts and es­tablish the order in which the monarchs reigned. There are no dates in the texts. The teacher helps with the vocabulary and interpretation.

2.       Individually the students read three texts about social and political move­ments in Britain (and also in Europe) and complete gap-filling activities aim­ing to raise students' understanding of the texts. The titles of the text are:

§         Town and country

§         The Women's Suffrage Movement

§         The First World War

3.       To give students the idea about technological progress at the beginning of the 20th century, a teacher provides brief information about the following in­ventions: photography, cars, gramophones, cinema, television and telephone.

4.       Brainstorming vocabulary connected with social classes - mainly upper-class and lower-class. Students may be familiar with some terms but the teacher provides short explanations about less familiar terms e.g. hunting - favourite pastime activity with upper-class people. The vocabulary is elicited through pictures depicting life of different social classes. Then it is written down in the forms of notes under headings: houses, clothing, ways of earning a living, free time activities - appropriately for upper-class and lower-class.

Homework: using notes from the lesson students fill in the chart about differ­ences and similarities between life in Britain and in Poland at the beginning of the 20th century.

The project is evaluated considering the following adapted from Literature and Language Teaching Lazar (1993), and partially developed by the author:

• Strategies and techniques used to help students cope with historical aspect in the texts
• Evidence that the tasks and activities helped the students to understand and enjoy the texts
• Evidence that the students found the texts interesting/boring and rele­vant/irrelevant
• Students participation and personal response to the texts
• Cultural value of the lessons according to the achieved outcomes and raised cultural awareness

Strategies and techniques used to help students cope with historical aspect in the texts

The whole project started with an introductory lesson giving the historical back­ground of the beginning of the 20^th century. Through dictation of short texts, a gap-filling exercise and brainstorming, students learnt about migration from the countryside to towns, the women's suffrage movement, the First World War and social classes. They made comparisons between these issues in Britain and in Poland. Although the students were used to investi­gating different sources such as ‘Mary Glasgow Magazines’, dictionaries of British or American Culture or videos, they had never had something like a history lesson in English. This was a bit perplexing for them but became clear as the project was gradually developed.

Evidence that the tasks and activities helped the students to understand and enjoy the texts

The texts, usually assigned to be read as homework, were accompanied by glos­saries explaining words and phrases. The students generally had no problems understanding the overall meaning of the texts because the language used in the chosen stories was appropriate to their English. Dur­ing the lessons they enjoyed such activities as:

• mini-competitions while dictating passages about hunting (lesson 7)
• discussions of the personality features or the financial situations of characters (lessons 2, 4 and 9)
• looking at photographs of London Parks (lesson 8) and comparing them to Polish ones
• discussion of the role of parks as places of relaxation (lesson 8)

These activities helped students discover multiple levels of meanings in the texts triggering their imagination therefore enabling greater enjoyment of the texts.

Evidence that the students found the texts interesting/boring and rele­vant/irrelevant

The variety of themes in short stories enable a teacher to involve individual students. In the stories chosen for this project the students had a chance to study such issues as:

• relations between upper-class and lower-class people (A Cup of Tea, The Model Millionaire)
• elderly people and their problems (Miss Brill)
• life in the country (The Open Window)
• engagement and marriage (New of the Engagement)
• a break in an artist's career (Acme)

Almost all of these issues seemed to evoke student interest and involve­ment. The least favourable appeared to be ‘the elderly and their problems’. The other themes appealed to the students with approximately the same level of significance that could be described by the author as satisfac­tory. It was mentioned that the group of students who partici­pated in the project ‘suffer from’ a lack of time which is why a high level of involvement could not have been expected from them.

Students participation and personal response to the texts

The students' participation and personal involvement is reflected in their homework and some of the activities performed in the classroom. Among the activities and homework calling for student participation and involvement are:

• the dramatised version of A Cup of Tea (lesson 2) - three student played the roles of Rosemary, her husband and the girl, the other, after the per­formance, tried to establish the order of the events from the story and re­told them from Rosemary's or the girls' point of view
• the use of a free-writing technique with texts on the topic "What does a success mean to you?" (lesson 10) - this was a personal response to the story The Model Millionaire
• writing a personal profile entitled The artist I admire - their response to the story Acme (lesson 11)
• a new approach to dictation introduced in lesson 12 to generate students' personal response to the issue of marriage and engagement

The author believes that the activities incorporated in lesson plans helped students to participate actively and respond personally to the literary works.

Cultural value of the lessons according to the achieved outcomes and raised cultural awareness

The main goal of the project was the development of cultural awareness. The short stories chosen for are rich in multiple levels of meanings such as the lifestyle of different social groups, their status and the re­lationships between them, the setting of the stories - different for each one. The cultural value of the lessons can be summarised in the following points:

• the students got to know the historical background of the beginning of the 20^th century both in Britain and in Poland
• knowledge of English writers was developed
• relations between different social classes was studied
• the ways people dressed, behaved, spent their free time and work were discussed
• the students had the opportunity to compare life one hundred years ago and nowadays

Bibliography

Collie, J. & Slater, S. (1987) Literature in the Language Classroom. Cam­bridge: CUP.

Elbow, P. (1997) Writing without Teachers. Oxford: OUP.

Harmer, J. (1991) The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman.

Hedge, T. (1998) Writing. Oxford: OUP.

Kramsch, C. (1993) Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP.

Kramsch, C. (1998 Language and Culture. Oxford: OUP.

Lazar, G. (1993) Literature and Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP.

Pulvemess, A. Distinctions & Dichotomies. Culture-free, culture-bound. Published in English Teaching Professional Issue 14 January 2000.

Pulvemess, A English as a Foreign Culture? (in BS course disc).

Raims, A. (1983) Techniques in Teaching Writing. Oxford: OUP

Sources that provided material for lesson plans

Gentleman, D. (1985) David Gentleman's London. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Gower, R. (1990) Past into Present. An anthology of British and American Literature. Edinburgh: Longman.

Stephens, M. (1992) Practice Advanced Writing. Edinburgh: Longman.

The short stories were taken from: Angielski w Radiu. Listen to my story (1981/1982). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Radia i Telewizji.