Contextualization

 VI: Fairy Tales

Literary Composition.

Literary composition refers to any piece of written material. Literary composers and creative writers often write for business, academic and artistic outlets.

Literary compositions are classified in literary genres.

Literary Genres.

A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even (as in the case of fiction) length. The Literary Genres are: Drama, Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry.

These literary genres are divided in to literary subgenres.

Literary Subgenres.

The commedy and tragedy are inside the Drama genre. In the Nonfiction genre, the biography, autobiography, narrative, periodicals and reference are involved. Lyric, narrative and dramatic belong to genre of Poetry. The Fiction genre contains folklore, historical, mystery, realistic fiction, romance, science fiction, thriller and fantasy as subgenre

Fairy Tales.

Fairy Tales belongs to the subgenre of fantasy. A fairy tale is a story, often intended for children, that features fanciful and wondrous characters such as elves, goblins, wizards, and even, but not necessarily, fairies. The term “fairy” tale seems to refer more to the fantastic and magical setting or magical influences within a story, rather than the presence of the character of a fairy within that story.

VD: Reading Comprehension

Language learning

Language learning is a process that consists of many aspects like society and culture. When language is used for communicative purposes it is necessary to take into consideration some factors like the reason, the message, the relation among participants and so on (Peter Skehan 1998). English is the most spoken language around the world. That is why its study has been implemented in the educational field. In this area, the study of the English language is crucial because an English speaker has many opportunities of working, studying abroad and traveling.

Skehan (1998) affirms that second language learning is not always successful. Due to this fact, a lot of studies have been carried out in order to explore different alternatives with the aim of finding the most effective method for teaching a language. However, what is clear is the importance of developing the language skills so that communication will be reached.

Language Skills

Susan Boyer (2009) affirms that in order to learn any language effectively and use it fluently, it is necessary to focus and work in the development of the four main skills, which are:

• Listening

• Speaking

• Reading

• Writing

She explains that each one of them play an important role and complement each other in order to understand and produce the language that is being learned. It seems proven that the harmonious development of the four skills in modern language classes favors not only each one of those in particular, but to all others. The four skills are to some extent essential part of a language. We must not separate them too rigidly for the purposes of constructing specific teaching materials.

 

Receptive skill

Georges Duquette (1995) describes the receptive skills as a basic part of the language teaching and learning approach. In fact, they are fundamental for learning a language and can be developed through the teaching of the productive skills because they are complementary.

He describes receptive skills as the ones in which a person receives and understands information, but does not produces it as it is the case of listening and reading. These skills are also known as passive, because when learning a new language or mother tongue students begin with one of the receptive skills that is listening.

Reading Comprehension

Woolley (2011) states that reading comprehension is a mental process in which the reader must understand what is described in the text rather than making meaning word by word. He explains that during this process there is a mental representation of the ideas presented in the text.

In this sub-skill a person receives information and understands what the author is transmitting. This is a difficult process because sometimes it requires the skill of speaking too, so that the person can pronounce the words that he or she reads. However, this depends on each person’s style.