Using Short Stories in Spanish Language Teaching
In this article we are going to enumerate different reasons for the use of literary texts in the ELE lesson. This will help to provide a solid basis from which to raise other questions regarding the type of literary text that can best adapt to teaching a language. Thereby the problems that we find when presenting a literary text with a didactic purpose are related with the difficulties of selecting the most appropriate and adjust it to the timing at which the practice of teaching is subject. Once these difficulties are identified, basing it in five criteria to choose the literary text making reference to the text being adequate for the student bearing in mind his/her language level and his/her culture, the interest the student can have on the text, the stylistic correctness and its value in the history of literature, I will propose a specific genre, the short story. The election is based in that the short story possess a series of peculiarities that are representative of this genre and, at the same time converge with the didactic value required to learn a language. I will avoid the most discussed subjects such as the idea of a different narrative genre from the tale its origin and denomination to centre in the distinctive features that have greater consensus among the critics.