Impact of Literature (Literary texts) as Instructional Strategy on developing Reading and Writing Skills among Senior Secondary School II ESL Students in Lagos State

This paper presented some research based opinions on the use of literature in language classroom especially for reading and writing skills development. It also sought to determine the impact of literature (literacy texts) as instructional strategy on developing reading and writing skills of students in Senior Secondary School, class II in ESL Classroom. The paper also attempted to establish various arguments in support of literature as authentic materials to be used in language classroom, especially in teaching the language skills of reading and writing. With stratified randomized sampling technique, 60 S.S II Students were selected from a Senior Secondary School, FCE(T), Akoka. The study used Descriptive survey and Quasi Experimental Method. A literary text titled ?A Women in Her Prime? which is among the prescribed text for WAEC (West African Examination Council) was given to the students to read. There are two groups of respondents in this work, i.e the controlled (30) and experimental group (30). The experimental group was given a kind of guide or intervention on how to read and respond to questions in writing form. The students in these two groups were observed and accessed. In reading, students reading interest, speed, comprehension, word recognition and right pronunciation were measured using the scale of insufficient, average reading, good reading and excellent reading. In writing, students were asked to write on topics such as summary of ideas presented in the text, themes and subject matter, character etc. A random picking was done on which of the written essays to be used for analysis. The data gathered were analyzed using a paired sample t-test to compare the significant different between the performance of the controlled group and experimental group. The performance of those who were not exposed to the intervention /literary skills and instructional guide is (X = 19.28; SD = 3.680) while those in experimental group is (X = 35.67; SD = 5.299). This is shown in the calculated value (t-cal) of 13.127 which is greater than the critical value (t-crit) of 1.98 with 99 degree of freedom at 0.05 level of significance. It is recommended that the literature of the targeted language should be used, taking into consideration the objective. Relevant classroom activities and techniques should be considered by teachers. The paper concluded by affirming that the use of literature is an adequate instructional strategy in ESL classroom, hence, should be employed by ESL teachers.