Don Quijote and Pippi Longstocking

Approaches to literature and the literary in Spanish textbooks for lower secondary school in Norway

Abstract

This article examines the role literature and literariness play in Spanish textbooks for lower secondary school in Norway. The empirical material consists of four textbook-series: Tapas, Vale, Amigos and Chicos Chicas. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in the analysis of the textbooks. The categories are not predefined but were established during the study to cover as many forms of literary presence as possible. The study maps the amount of literature in the different textbooks, in addition to text types and cultural affiliation. Moreover, the context of the texts and the tasks associated with them are examined. The findings show that the textbooks contain very few authentic literary texts. In contrast, they contain a significant number of stories, either adapted, literary stories, or so-called pedagogical-literary stories written by the textbook authors themselves. Many of the literary texts are also optional extra-texts placed at the end of the textbooks. Several of the literary texts are not accompanied by tasks at all. For those complemented by tasks, the most common are text comprehension and language (grammar) tasks. The findings are discussed in the frame of the most important approaches to literature within the field of foreign languages. The conclusion is that textbooks pay little attention to literature as such, but that literary genres and text norms play an important role in textbook texts. The text-selection, the placement of the texts and the tasks also testify to a traditional approach to literature. There is a considerable element of canon literature, and literature reading is projected to the future or reserved for the most advanced students. Literary texts lack tasks or form a starting point for language and text comprehension tasks.