Towards Effective Values of Teaching Literature to Secondary School Students

This study aims to investigate the significant role of literature teaching on secondary school students who study English as a foreign language. The subjects of the study consisted of (100) secondary school students (females). The experiment took place in Omdurman area. The students were chosen from two Sudanese secondary schools in the same area for the academic year 2015/2016. (50) Students out of (100) studied literature for more than six years and the rest (50) students didnt study any literary texts for the same period. A questionnaire was distributed to (30) English teachers, a student test was given to secondary school students and (10) English directors were interviewed for data collection. A statistical analysis was carried out to find out the relation between literature teaching and its role in promoting the students performance. The data of the study was analyzed by using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). The findings of the study indicated that, there is a positive, statistical significant relation between the study of literature and the standard of the students in English. On the other hand, the students who studied literature scored high marks in a test that contained the same questions and took the same time for both students, compared with those students who didnt study any literary text. That is to say, Literature teaching, affects positively in the acquisition of English language. The study concluded with some recommendations offered to teachers of English language, administrations of secondary schools and for designers of Englishcurricula in order to encourage students to better learning of English through the teaching of literature