The use of children´s literature to teach social skills in children

Abstract

One of the easiest and most effective ways to introduce social skills in children is through the use of children’s literature. We are all aware of the fact that many children with an awkward behavior in class lack these skills, whilst at the same time some other children benefit from its direct instruction as well. Children’s literature enables us to reach a good knowledge of the communicative competence, to study all the subject areas of the curriculum and to understand, lately, many different aspects of life. We can surely define children’s literature as a dynamic group of productions which possess artistic qualities and which share common general aspects with other types of literary texts. And children access this type of written productions during their first years of Infant or Primary Education. Following the guidelines of Jill May, the aim of education when using children’s literature is related to the creativity, the play and the development of literary language. But how do we get our children access this kind of language? The answer to this question is as simple as stating that we can find many different characters in children’s literature who have interesting values worthwhile sharing and instructing. All these characters may help us improve education and, ultimately, the promotion of children’s literature in the official curriculum. The educational and pedagogical value of using stories and children’s literature has always been undoubted throughout the academic world. Nowadays, more and more English teachers of young learners are using selected stories from the world of children’s literature for two main reasons. On the one hand, teachers are increasingly becoming more familiar with a methodology that is more based on the acquisition process. And, on the other hand, children’s stories conform to the main didactic objectives for foreign language teaching to young learners: linguistic, psychological, cognitive, social and cultural. Therefore, the ultimate objective of this paper shall be to enhance the value of using children’s literature for pedagogical reasons. Since this type of literature is so valuable for them, it also should be to those who are responsible of their education, their teachers. Nonetheless, it is quite regretful that such an important aspect that can play a critical role in the children’s lives is so often neglected and relegated to a lesser role in the official teacher education doctrine, up to date at least.