Summary
#e essay discusses the dilemmas of literature teaching as first raised by student unrest towards the 
late 1960s because of the inefficiency and lack of interest of the established forms of literary studies 
and literature teaching of the time, and the later resolutions of these dilemmas towards the end of 
the century. #e process of long-term experimental examination of the existing alienating forms of 
studies and teaching started when the criticism of students came to be supported by some of the most 
distinguished professors of literature. 
#e second section centres on some more successful efforts to surpass such inefficient old forms of 
literature teaching with the major shift from teaching data about literature to the discoursal analysis 
of texts and to promoting students’ competence of critical understanding of literary texts and the 
functioning of language. 
#e third part deals with trends in literature teaching within the framework of English literature as 
anticipated by the new Slovene curricula for English as a foreign language and the preparation of 
teachers for it. It emphasises the importance of the intercultural dimension of teaching according 
to the new curricula and the rich possibilities for the understanding of intercultural contacts in the 
process of reading literature in English.
 Povzetek
Razprava govori o dilemah pouka književnosti, ki so jih ob koncu šestdesetih let preteklega 
stoletja odprli študentski nemiri v nekaterih deželah razvitega sveta z opozorili o nezanimivosti in 
neučinkovitosti ustaljenih oblik študija in pouka književnosti, rešitve zanje pa so prinesle šele temeljite 
spremembe pouka ob koncu stoletja. Ko so se študentskim kritikam pridružili nekateri najvplivnejši 
profesorji književnosti, se je pričel dolgotrajni proces analitičnega in eksperimentalnega razčlenjevanja 
obstoječih oblik študija in pouka.
Drugi del prikaže nekatera najuspešnejša prizadevanja za preseganje neučinkovitih in že zastarelih oblik 
književnega pouka z osrednjim premikom od podatkov o književnosti k razčlenjevanju samega besedila 
in k razvijanju sposobnosti za kritično razumevanje umetnostnega diskurza in širšega delovanja jezika. 
T retji del spregovori o razvojnih težnjah pri književnem pouku v okviru poučevanja angleške 
književnosti po novih slovenskih učnih načrtih in o študijskih pripravah učiteljev za tak pouk. 
Poudarja pomen medkulturne razsežnosti tako zasnovanega pouka in bogate možnosti za razumevanje 
medkulturnih stikov, ki jih ponuja branje angleških umetnostnih besedil. 
DOI: 10.4312/elope.1.1-2.141-156

In the middle of student revolts in the late 1960s a virulent debate about such functions of 
literature teaching that would be acceptable to students opened among the teachers of literature. 
Specifically, the protesting students called attention to the uselessness and boring nature of 
the established transmissional literature teaching. #e support for student criticism came, 
unexpectedly, from their professors. At the colloquium ‘L ’ensignement de la litterature’, held 
in Paris during 22
nd
-29
th
 July 1969, Roland Barthes delivered his famous address “Reflections 
sur un manuel” analysing the inefficiency of literary textbooks consisting of information about 
authors and periods along with short extracts from their texts. Asking a provocative question 
about the impact of such teaching in adult life, Barthes offered the following answer:
If we restrict ourselves to an objective inventory, we would answer that the part of literature that 
continues into adult life as lived today is this: a few answers in crossword puzzles and television 
quiz shows, posters announcing the hundredth anniversary of an author’s birth or death, some 
paperback titles, some critical allusions in a newspaper we are reading for a wholly different 
purpose, to find something other than those allusions (Barthes 1997, 71).
Such teaching – in his opinion – reduced literature for grown-ups to childhood memory 
because it did not help to develop literary competence (Culler 1975) and stimulated no 
interest in literature. 
#e question of what texts to teach, as opened by the ever stronger questioning of the literary 
canon, was thus not the only one to trouble teachers of literature and scholars. In the past 
few decades they had to face more radical questions: Why to teach literature and how to 
teach it to ever more disinterested students, who prefer visually supported and more easily 
accessible narrative of film, who are not interested in canonical texts, who are not willing, or 
even unable, to make the effort necessary to read longer literary texts on their own, and who 
have at their disposal more information about literature, individual authors and their texts 
on the internet than can be offered in the classroom. #ose teachers who have been aware of 
the new circumstances of literature teaching have tried to establish new functions of literature 
teaching and to justify the study of literature. #is endeavour is far from easy after the end 
of reading and !e Death of Literature (Kernan 1990) have already been announced and the 
situation has to be viewed from the perspective of After the Death of Literature (Schwartz 
1997). It has become obvious that the value of teaching literature is not at all self-evident, and 
that the teaching itself can have a negative/alienating impact on students.  #e questioning of 
existent practices and the search for more efficient methods have therefore become a practical 
necessity. If the answers were easy to find and persuasive for students of literature, not only for 
their teachers, the debate about literature teaching would not continue from decade to decade, 
from conference to conference, in countless books and essays. #e very virulence of the debate 

testifies to the urgency of demonstrating the more generally acceptable functions of literature 
teaching in the circumstances of decreasing interest in literature and in reading. Some authors 
have even found the reasons for the loss of interest in literature in the inadequate methods of 
teaching and studying literature (cf. Sell 2001, 2 and ff.).
#e increasing questioning of literature teaching along with the demand for a more student-
centred literary studies from the late 1960s spread along with student unrest. Several authors 
in Germany and elsewhere came to empathise with student demands with essays published 
in Neue Ansichten einer kunftigen Germanistik. Probleme einer Sozial- und Rezeptionsgeschichte 
der Literatur Kritik, der Linguistik, und Kommunikationswissenschaft (Kolbe 1973) and other 
texts. #ey advocated necessary changes in literary studies by referring to the importance of 
readers’/students’ own reading as later analysed by the best known German proponents of 
Rezeptionsästhetik, Robert Jauss (1982) and Wofgang Iser (1978).  #e following years saw the 
publication of countless studies criticising existent practices and searching for new possibilities 
of legitimising literature teaching with more student-centred approaches. #e probing of 
questions concerning literature teaching in the United Kingdom and the United States ranged 
from the radical criticism of Peter Widdowson’s analysis of English studies in Rereading English 
(1982) and the selected papers of the Essex conferences Literature, Politics and !eory: Essays 
from the Essex Conferences 1976-1984 (edited by Frances Barker 1986) to detailed descriptions 
of possible student-centred approaches in Robert Scholes’ study T extual Power: Literary !eory 
and the T eaching of Literature in 1985. #e total output in this field defies any overview.
1
  #e 
predicaments of literature teaching have been the subject of several conferences and collections 
of papers, as for instance Literatures in English: New Perspectives (1990) and English Literature 
and the University Curriculum (1992), both edited by Wolfgang Zach. #e authors of essays in 
the latter collection share one common concern: “a fundamental insecurity about the function 
of literature in the modern world and in the university curriculum” (Zach 1992, 11). #e 
efforts to come to terms with the teaching of literatures in English continue in the papers 
collected in Innovation and Continuity in English Studies (2001) by  Herbert Grabes for IAUPE 
(the International Association of the University Professors of  English), and the situation in  
other languages is analysed in Eurolit. Les études litteraires en Europe  (1996) edited by Wenzlaff-
Eggebert.
#e analysis of the deficiencies of the traditional teaching of literature gained additional 
impetus from the blossoming of reader-response criticism in Anglophone countries and 
Rezeptionsästhetik  in Germany in the 1970s, which called attention to the centrality of 
the reader’s own response and  production of textual meaning, conceptualised by Iser as 
the “actualisation” of the literary text, and later as a “textual world” by the linguistically 
oriented criticism. #e newly revealed importance of the reader for the construction of 
meaning changed the perception of the function of students’ own meaning in the teaching 
1


of literature. On the basis of accumulated new evidence about the reader’s own contribution 
to the construction of textual meaning
2
, students’ own readings gradually came to be 
regarded as the most relevant starting point for classroom discussion (see also Sell 2000, 22). 
As a consequence of this shift the authority of a teacher’s own reading and interpretation 
no longer had priority in the classroom, and the teacher-centred approaches to literature 
teaching gave way to student-centredness as the basic principle of interactive teaching. What 
is more, empirical research provided abundant evidence about the importance of students’ 
own emotional and intellectual involvement in the reading. It also called attention to the 
fact that the expectation that students should share teachers’ reading and/or interpretation 
constitute the most frequent reason for students’ refusal of literary reading and literature (cf. 
Gejlon and Schram 1991; Hunt 1991; Morgan 1993; Marshall, Smagorinsky and Smith 
1995; Mial and Kuikinen 1995). Such radical changes were not welcomed by all teachers, 
especially not by those teachers who did not feel secure enough without relying on authority, 
so the debate continued in an almost continuous flow of studies revealing the failures of 
the traditional literature teaching and proposing changes based on the new findings about 
literary reading.
 Among the numerous efforts to define more efficient and student-centred possibilities of literary 
studies, Robert Scholes’ work T extual Power: Literary !eory and the T eaching of Literature 
(1985) merits special attention for both its clear criticism of harmful attitudes on the part 
of authoritative literature teachers and its description of new possibilities of student-centred 
approaches. Believing that the reverential attitude of the romantic aestheticism to literature is 
no longer appropriate in an age of verbal manipulation, when students need critical strength to 
resist the continuous assaults of mass media, Scholes proposes that “teaching literature” must 
stop and “studying texts” start (ibid., 16):
Now we must learn instead to help our students unlock the textual power and turn it to their own 
uses. We must help our students come into their own powers of textualization. We must help 
them to see that every poem, play, and story is a text related to others, both verbal pre-texts and 
social sub-texts and all manner of post-texts including their own responses, whether in speech, 
writing, or action. #e response to a text is itself always a text. Our knowledge is itself only a dim 
text that brightens as we express it. #is is why expression, the making of new texts by students, 
must play a major role in the kind of course we are discussing (ibid., 20).
Scholes’ concept of teaching students productive reading and literary competence necessitates 
a redefinition of the teacher’s role. #at is how he describes the new role:
2


Our job is not to produce “readings” for our students but to give them the tools for producing 
their own… Our job is not to intimidate students with our own superior textual production; it is 
to show them the codes upon which all textual production depends, and to encourage their own 
textual practice (ibid., 24-5).
Studies along similar lines emphasise that the most important part of teaching literature qua 
literature is teaching response to literature (Short and Candlin 1988, 179) and that, accordingly, 
teachers of literature must be equipped with insight into the forms and functions of texts in 
order to teach students how to bring to life the meaning potential of texts (Van Peer 1988, 
267). Several studies demonstrate how to teach and help students to discover not just what a 
text means, but also how it means: Ronald Carter’s and Paul Simpson’s Language, Discourse and 
Literature (1989), Ronald Carter’s and Walter Nash’s Seeing through Language (1990), Henry 
Widdowson’s Practical Stylistics (1992), and Mick Short’s Exploring the Language of Poems, 
Plays and Prose (1996), to name only a few of them. 
#e old approaches and practices have continued in spite of such intense efforts to stimulate 
a student-oriented teaching. In the 1990s specialists in literature teaching still found much to 
be desired in the field. Writing for a special issue of College Literature, significantly entitled #e 
Politics of T eaching Literature, Zavarzadeh and Morton (1990, 56) would like their students 
to see that their understanding of texts is a result of their situatedness in a complex network 
of gender, class, and race relations and to learn to ‘read’ the dominant social systems and its 
texts against themselves. In his Introduction to the Special T opic issue of PMLA devoted to 
#e T eaching of Literature, Martin Biddy believes that teachers and mentors should take the 
responsibility for alleviating the institutional pressure to master material at the expense of 
being affected by texts and strongly recommends the introduction of an explicit pedagogical 
concern at the centre of professional and literary exchanges (1997, 23). 
Robert de Beaugrande (1995, 100) addresses his criticism to the entire educational system 
permitting transmissional teaching and consequent insensitivity to students and their 
particular needs:
… literature has been widely co-opted by educational systems as a narrow-minded exercise in 
memorizing the trivia of authors’ biographies or historical schools, identifying quotations, pasting 
erudite labels on literary ‘devices’, and, within rigid authoritarian setting, giving the ‘correct 
interpretation’ certified by textbooks, teachers, and traditional literary scholars. #e predictable 
result has merely been that ordinary people are made to feel incompetent to participate in literary 
communication in creative, self-actualizing ways, and they proceed to abandon their interest in 
literature altogether.
In 1999 College Literature devoted another special issue to #e Profession of Literature at 
the End of the Millennium complaining once again about the slow improvement in literary 
studies from the end of the century perspective (Myrsiades 1999, 1; Schwartz 1999, 5; Cioffi 
1999, 82).  #e model of a fully developed psychoanalytically oriented methodology of 
literature teaching paying exclusive attention to students’ personality as presented by Bracher 

(1999, 127) however seems far from realisable. #e desire to come to terms with the questions 
concerning literature teaching thus continues unabated in the present century. PMLA for May 
2002 published the essays of twelve professors trying to answer the two related questions: “Why 
Major in Literature – What Do We T ell Our Students?”  #ese essays try to find understandable 
justification in students’ acquisition of critical reading skills, or rather, in improved linguistic 
and textual competence amounting to students’ better understanding of signifying practices. 
#e latter should result in beneficial knowledge of how to come to terms with the complexities 
of contemporary existence.
3
 #eir argument seems to indicate that the traditional prodesse (to 
instruct) prevails over delectare (to delight), which has become the domain of visually supported 
narratives. However it is hard to see the value of their recommendations since the details of 
how to teach and what to teach in terms of literary competence or even cognitive benefits of 
critical thinking are scarce. #us all the questioning concerning literature teaching along with 
the attempts to design more efficient curricula on the basis of the achieved understanding 
of the situation cannot be said to have resulted in restoring literary studies and literature 
teaching to the credibility it used to enjoy. In spite of all the accumulated knowledge about the 
importance of student-centred teaching some teachers obviously continue to use the inefficient 
transmissional literature teaching. #is poses the question:
  Why is the transition to more student-centred approaches so slow? 
First of all discussing and designing change is easier than implementing it because teaching 
practices are always backed by considerable inertia of teachers who are not aware of the out-
datedness of their approaches and are, accordingly, not willing to change them, especially 
not for a more demanding methodology. Some teachers may have a problem realising 
that “literature is not something given once and for all but something constructed and 
reconstructed, the product of shifting conceptual entitlements and limits” (Greenblat and 
Gunn 1992, 5; cf. also Eagleton 1983), i.e. a socially agreed concept about a particular social 
practice with changing functions in changing social circumstances.  #e change of what was 
“once conceived as a ‘work’” and is now conceived “in most fields of literary scholarship as a 
‘text’”, i.e. the change that has caused the critical shift of focus “from the forms of the signified 
to the processes of signification” (Greenblat and Gunn 1992, 3), contributes to make literature 
teaching a considerably more demanding and responsible profession. Last but not least, a part 
of the answer to the slowness of the change seems to lie in the students who, as the addressees 
of the teaching, should share the beliefs of teachers and be willing to study harder, i.e. to read 
with greater interest. For the communication necessary for efficient literature teaching, both 
parties in communication, the students and the teachers, should be willing to participate.  It is 
simply not enough if teachers are persuaded of the importance of literature. As long as students 
3


do not share their persuasion and do not value literature the latter simply cannot have any 
value for them. It will rather be perceived and experienced as imposition of outdated values.  
Students who have not come to value reading of literature on the basis of their own experience 
will never develop a lifelong interest in it.  #e possible benefits of reading literature should 
never be taken for granted but should rather be made as explicit as possible by descriptions/
definitions of new functions, as well as by detailed discussion of particular texts. Additionally, 
the discussion of parallel texts – a novel and its filmed version – should sensitise students to 
the limitations (along with the advantages) of visually supported narratives and emphasise the 
challenges of the written text and its characteristic demands for active linguistic interaction 
in meaning production. #e importance of the latter for students’ cognitive development 
should also be discussed. #e persuasion of students presupposes arousing their interest and 
stimulating their active participation with lots of positive support, offering them a suitable 
challenge together with a vote of confidence and involving them in setting their own 
goals. Expecting the best from students and attributing to them the capacity to meet such 
expectations are the best ways of stimulating positive attitudes to reading and literature.
T o be effective for the students of today, the persuasion of them must also proceed from 
their current situation and move away from, or at least update, the traditional defences of 
the importance of literature in Arnoldian terms. Why people used to read and what benefits 
they expected in very different circumstances is of little, mostly only historical, interest for the 
students facing a radically changed globalised world. #us new justifications of literary reading 
and study should be stressed, as for instance the possibilities of literary reading to reveal and 
make understandable the multiple uses and functions of language in forming and maintaining 
human relations, in representing different realities, and in discursal possibilities of realising 
such functions in ways beyond the visually supported narrative of films (cf. Grosman and Rot 
Gabrovec 2000, 18 and ff.). A better knowledge of such possibilities is an explainable and 
also acceptable necessity for students who, immersed in a constant twenty-four hour flow of 
language, have a limited understanding of its functioning because of their underdeveloped 
language awareness which is not sufficient for coping with current uses of language. At the 
same time their literacy is decreasing because of the proportion of visually supported narrative 
demanding little immediate cognitive processing and circumstances demanding a higher 
literacy for meaningful survival. In such circumstances students’ ability to construe and 
understand their own experience by means of organised narrative learnt through reading is also 
decreasing. #ey have little or no knowledge of the possibilities of a better understanding of 
the constructedness of their social reality through language (Berger and Luckmann 1967) by 
self-reflexive analysis of their own concepts as involved in reading and comprehension. #ey 
often experience the contact of several cultures in ever more multicultural societies as puzzling. 
Critical scrutiny of such contacts and their consequences in literary texts makes possible the 
development of an intercultural awareness for the understanding of such situations. Last but 
not least, profounder textual understanding as acquired in this way is preliminary for all higher 
levels of perceiving and critically analysing the formal (aesthetic) qualities of literary texts on 
the basis of language as used in literature.

#e problems of students should be seen in the light of their own circumstances, for instance 
their daily exposure to the media of mass communication that “constantly and emphatically 
parade a plurality of ways of life and thinking” and thus, unrestricted by any fences of 
geographical or cultural borders, promote pluralism (Berger and Luckmann 1995, 38). #e 
experience of the structural crisis of meaning resulting from such pluralism is particularly 
strong for the young who have not been encultured in their first/native culture.  Growing up 
in a world in which there are neither common values determining actions in different spheres 
of life, nor a single reality identical for all, the young find it more and more difficult to tell 
how they should lead their life when the unquestioned validity of the traditional order is 
shaken (ibid., 29–30). Modern pluralism thus undermines the taken-for-granted residing in 
the realm of unquestioned, secure knowledge. In this way everything, the world, society and 
personal identity are called ever more into question (ibid., 40). #e range of options grows 
beyond imagination, one does not need to choose only what job to take and whom to marry, 
but can select the gods from a range of possible options, change one’s religious allegiance, one’s 
citizenship, one’s life-style, one’s image and even one’s sexual habitus (ibid., 45). #e world 
of countless alternatives and ever present pressure to choose from them is more difficult to 
understand with all the changes resulting from pluralism, which can only be understood with 
a well developed intercultural awareness. Only with such an awareness and resulting tolerance 
can individuals and communities hope to live side by side peacefully, whilst directing their 
existence towards different values. Both the necessary intercultural awareness and tolerance 
can be promoted through interculturally oriented discussion of literary texts paying special 
attention to dissimilarities in similar concepts that would otherwise pass unnoticed or be 
assimilated to students’ own culture.
Making sense of such a complex world calls for high literacy. T o help students develop such 
literacy and literary competence teachers must never forget that students’ own readings, 
opinions, questions and interpretations are the only acceptable basis of classroom discussion. 
#ey must stimulate students’ articulation of their opinions by attentive listening, by voicing 
their respect and appreciation, and by finding all possible ways how to elicit such responses and 
by strictly avoiding stifling student responses with their own opinions. #e fatal impact of the 
teacher’s own introductory explanation of the text is best analysed by Betsy Keller (1997, 63):
If the teacher begins the class by lecturing, the students must temporarily suppress their responses 
and impressions and may conclude that the experience they just had with the text is meaningful 
only insofar as it prepared them to receive the teacher’s (superior) judgement and analysis.
Since students may find speaking about literature a situation of danger, that is, of revealing 
their “incorrect” or otherwise “inappropriate” readings and opinions, great care must be taken 
to stimulate their self-esteem and persuade them of their ability to speak about literature in 
socially acceptable ways. #ey should not only understand that discussing literature can and 
should be an enjoyable activity, but also have the experience of being able to do it and be 
respected for it. #is is why classroom discussion should avoid scholasticism  (Sell 2001, 2) 
and any approaches of teaching and discussion that alienate students. 

T eachers must further be aware of the differences between their reading experience and those of 
the students’ as based on their different knowledge of their reality and different reading. #ey 
must make sure that the readings of students are expressed prior to any attempts to upgrade 
their understanding of the text. Introductory discussion in small peer groups makes it possible 
for students to see the differences in their understanding and so to learn about the processes 
of meaning production and about the polysemy of texts. Seeing the different readings of their 
classmates also reduces students’ anxiety about the ‘correctness’ of their own. For longer texts 
Slovene students are usually asked to create their own action lines, reading logs or reading 
diaries at home so as to feel more secure in mastering the text prior to classroom discussion 
in which they first compare such notes about their readings and opinions in small groups 
and only later report about their findings in classroom discussion. #eir reports serve as the 
basis for negotiating the common action line representing (characteristic) shared readings of 
the entire class and showing the outstandingly perceived segments of the text as well as the 
neglected ones. If the teacher is sufficiently attentive to the perspective of students and also 
to the heterogeneity of their responses, s/he will at this point be able to help the students 
discover the unnoticed and/or assimilated elements of the text, to consider various possibilities 
of reading and interpretation, and to see their specific comprehension problems, achieving all 
this without resorting to prolonged lecturing about it.  In discussing the differences among 
students’ responses, the text’s various ways of inviting such responses through its particular uses 
of language can be revealed to build up students’ literary competence. #e latter is promoted 
especially by the examination of the motives for such differences among students’ responses that 
can illuminate the idiosyncratic elements in their readings and stimulate self-reflective reading.
On the basis of such discussion students can also be asked to examine already available 
interpretations of and various critical statements about the discussed text, as published in 
critical studies and various periodicals, to find out which of such statements seem to have 
the greatest explanatory power for them or are relevant in other ways. In arguing their own 
choices from presented critical statements, students come to see various possibilities of dealing 
with different aspects of literary texts, and through arguing for their own readerly and critical 
preferences achieve a better understanding of their own reading and the factors which influence 
it. Learning about various possibilities of interpretation and about critical approaches, they 
also improve their own critical competence and become critical of the opinions of others. #ey 
can extend their own reading through trying to see the text from the point of view of both 
fellow students and the authors of existing criticism. When several groups of Slovene students 
of English were requested to choose from a list of critical statements about a discussed text and 
give their reasons for their choices and/or preferences, their answers revealed great interest in 
critical possibilities and in other people’s readings.
4
 Discussion of various (already published) 
critical statements and interpretations of a text introduces students to different possibilities of 
analysing texts and corresponding critical approaches, as well as contributes to their acquisition 
of the words and terminology as used in speaking about literature.
4


In the light of such possibilities also students’ own positioning and its influence upon their 
reading can be problematised, as for instance when they read a foreign text in intercultural 
contexts. Such contexts often generate unpredictable differences in reading emerging from 
individual combinations of different languages and cultures that are important for student-
centred teaching. Such changes, however, often remain unnoticed and are underestimated 
simply because they become visible only when and if special attention is paid to them. Only 
those teachers who encourage their students to express their opinions and puzzlement and 
take the trouble to find out what disturbs them, what is beyond their comprehension, what 
goes against their expectations and makes them uncomfortable in any possible way, may 
hope to see the differences among the readings/meanings actually produced in the classroom 
and to understand their students’ feelings about and attitudes toward the text read in an 
intercultural position. #e discussion of such differences is important for students’ better 
understanding of the text in its own terms and, as we will see later, for the reflection about 
their culture-bound reading perceptions which is prerequisite for the development of their 
intercultural awareness. 
At this point it may seem that student-centred literature teaching aiming at the development 
of their critical thinking and literary competence is too demanding to be realistic. It is true, 
literature teaching in accordance with all above-listed recommendations is much more 
demanding and may even be strenuous at first for both the student and the teacher. However 
it is not impossible and, when put into practice, it is much more rewarding for both, teachers 
who can see positive results instead of students’ resistance and students who are learning to read 
critically on their own no longer entertain prejudices against the discussion of literary texts. 
What is more, such interactive teaching of literature is not possible at the level of university 
study of languages and literatures only, it has been rather successfully introduced in Slovenia 
in secondary schools to the satisfaction of both teachers and students, when they come to see 
its long-term benefits for reading about different cultures finding their artistic expression in 
English and for the possibility of autonomous upgrading of their knowledge of language.
#e new curricula designed after Slovene independence in 1991 promote student-centred 
approaches in literature teaching both in the mother tongue and in foreign languages at all levels 
of instruction. #e teachers of Slovene have embraced the new orientation towards enabling 
students at all levels for autonomous reading and contact with literary texts and have provided 
interesting theoretical support (see Krakar-Vogel 1991, 1993, 1994; Saksida 1995; and Kordigel 
1995). At the level of tertiary studies some teachers have gone a step further. #us Miran Hladnik 
(2002) recommends emancipated analysis of authors and texts without previous division into 
artistic and trivial, or rather ‘eternal’ and ‘temporary’ texts, the discussion of the literary system 
as a whole, and the use of contemporary technologies for the analysis of texts. And Marko Juvan 
(2002, 18) advocates new approaches to the writing of literary history ranging “from verbal 
indications of awareness that the writing of history is a construction of one of the possible models 

of the past, the technique of multiple voices and fragment montage, to the shaping of an open, 
hypertextual literary historical archive which would be amenable to constant change.”  
Besides strongly supporting new student-centred approaches (see Grosman 1995; Maver 
1995; Hribar 1995) the teachers of English literature published several studies developing 
original student-centred approaches which promote comparative critical attitudes for Slovene 
students of English (Mozetič 1992, 1995 and 1995a), and stimulate students’ critical interests 
and active interaction with texts and more creative contribution in the classroom (Grosman 
and Rot 1997; Grosman 1999; Grosman and Rot Gabrovec 2000). As a matter of fact 
the author has only been able to find one article advocating the old transmissional way of 
literature teaching on the basis of short extracts with story summaries and information about 
the author (see Jurak 1995). #us when the new curricula for English had to pass nation wide 
discussion, all the teachers of English unanimously supported their new concept of literature 
teaching. #is concept stresses the reading of integral texts with the aim of making it possible 
for all students to acquire the necessary reading ability in English and corresponding literary 
competence, along with the cultural knowledge necessary for the understanding of the text and 
a different culture. Conceived in this way, literature teaching also supports the development 
of intercultural communicative competence in English that is the overall objective of the new 
curricula. #e emphasis on the cognitive functions and broader benefits of reading literature 
in English at the same time makes literature teaching more persuasive for the students. #e 
implementation of the new student-centred teaching of literature in English is supported by 
all curricula explicitly describing students’ acquisition of reading skills and literary competence 
as a prerequisite of cultural knowledge and the necessary intercultural awareness. 
T o be able to read an integral text in English (or any foreign language) without frustration 
and also to be ready to speak about it critically, students should first learn that texts can be 
mastered at the level at which their discussion ceases to be embarrassing by using various 
strategies, as for instance by close reading, by special ways of returning to the text in the light 
of their own thematisation, and by simply making reading logs, action lines or reading diaries. 
Having reached their own reading, they next learn to differentiate between the printed text as 
intersubjectively available to all of them and their subjective response, or rather ‘actualisation’ 
or  ‘textual world’. When they feel safe in their mastery of the text, they can be confronted with 
the different readings of their fellow students and so come to see that different readers produce/
construe different meanings of the same text. In this way they can gain some insight into the 
processes of reading as necessary for the understanding of one’s own subjective production 
of textual meaning. Such knowledge is also necessary to reduce their fear lest their readings 
are not ‘correct’ or in accordance with what the teacher expects them to understand; as a 
consequence they also feel free to contribute to the classroom discussion of the text. #ough 
such a teaching of response is more time consuming than the teaching of information about 
literature, most teachers of English find it more rewarding than the latter for a simple reason: 
because it makes the interaction in the classroom more lively and also sends several students, 
reassured of their ability to cope with literary texts on their own, to further reading of literature. 

As a consequence of such positive experience also secondary teachers have started developing 
their own techniques of more student-centred literature teaching and have invented numerous 
new strategies of stimulating students’ interaction with the text and with classmates after they 
have attended only the introductory seminars presenting student-centred literature teaching 
for the new school leaving examinations (Eržen and Fidler 2000). #e students preparing to 
teach English are introduced to the student-centred approach in the time of their studies and 
discuss also the possibilities of its cognitive benefits, including autonomous maintaining of the 
acquired language and well developed intercultural awareness.
When student response is in the centre of teachers’ attention, it is also possible to locate 
the impact of the particular intercultural context upon their reading literature in English. 
Reading in terms of their own culture and ideas of what is humanly likely, appropriate and 
acceptable some students often find fault with characters because they do not behave and act 
according to their ideas in their first reading. It is interesting to note that such responses to 
characters and their behaviour usually do not appear in the discussion of culturally and/or 
temporally very distant texts in reading of which students seem to be able to be constantly 
aware of their essential (cultural) differentness due to such distance and, accordingly, do not 
anticipate their readerly and human expectations to apply and so do not feel critical of the 
differences in characters’ psychological make-up and their acting. In reading texts which 
seem   closer because of their stronger personal resonance, students are more likely to criticise 
characters for their not behaving in accordance with their expectations simply because in 
such cases they pay less or no attention to their cultural differentness. #us for instance such 
at first simple concepts as what is a friend in terms of how does a friend behave and what 
friendship means or what patterns of family relations are ‘normal’ come to disturb more 
attentive students who perceive the differences in comparison with their own expectations. 
Several young Slovene readers have come to criticise Holden in !e Catcher in the Rye for his 
being overcritical and not at all a good friend and his parents for their lack of parental love. 
Along with more complex discussion of what various more abstract concepts such as ‘rich’ and 
‘riches’ or ‘democracy’ mean in different cultures (and/or circumstances) such differences in 
reading perception provide a good starting point for the discussion of intercultural differences 
occurring not only at the level of the obvious but also at much less transparent levels, at which 
they may remain unseen and, accordingly, unanalysable and as such can constitute a source 
of intercultural misunderstanding. When analysed, however, such more subtle differences 
can lead to the development of students’ intercultural awareness and consequent tolerance of 
cultural differentness.
Students can reach a closer understanding of Holden’s predicament or any other character 
in an English text only when they come to realise that their specific perceptions of such 
characters’ behaviour derive from their different – and culture-specific – concept of friendship, 
of what a friend is expected to be like, what kind of criticism is socially acceptable according 
to their own standards, what family seems ‘normal’ in their own circumstances. Only when 
they come to see that their own concept of friends and friendship among class mates, family 

relations etc. do not apply to the texts from different English speaking cultures, can they come 
to see such characters not only from their perspective but also from a different, for instance an 
American perspective.  
 T o become interculturally sensitive, students must first become aware of the differences 
between their own concepts of human relations, for instance of friends and friendship, and 
the concepts as implied in the text under discussion. In other words, they should develop the 
necessary intercultural awareness for the appreciation of the less visible differences between 
the two cultures, their own and the American or English etc. T o develop such an awareness 
they should be able to understand the differences in concepts of what at first seems to be the 
same thing, i.e. they should learn that what is described as lexical equivalence, or rather, the 
same meaning of the word denoting ‘the same’ object in two different languages (and their 
dictionaries), is seldom really equivalent, especially with such complex words as friend and 
friendship or words describing such social phenomena as riches which are relative to a culture/
society. #ey should understand that words, as names for objects, are equivalent in lexical 
terms only at a very high level of generalisation (i.e. in dictionaries). In the reality of everyday 
use words have peculiar constellations of meaning related to a particular time and space of 
a specific culture. Students should realise that there are differences between the concepts in 
their mother tongue and in English, differences in sets of behaviour and in modes of their 
perception. In other words, that the meaning of the word friend, rich etc. is culture-bound 
and not the same in Slovene and in English, so they should not expect the behaviour related 
to it in their Slovene situation to apply elsewhere. Only when they come to see that English 
embodies a different set of beliefs, values and shared meanings, will they be able to reflect on 
both others and self, fictional characters’ ideas and their own, and to understand their attitudes 
to other people.
T o be able to fully understand the differences of another culture and its literary embodiment 
in a text, students thus need to become aware of their own cultural schemata along with 
their affective and attitudinal dimensions. T rying to see their own concepts and culturally 
conditioned schemata from the perspective of a different culture and its different concepts will 
help them to become aware of what seems ‘normal’ or even ‘natural’ from their own culture 
only and to accept the fact that other people have other concepts and schemata through which 
they understand their physical and social world and, accordingly, should not be attributed 
students’ own expectations and judgements. Such an awareness makes it possible for the 
students to view texts in English from a dialogical perspective, their own and familiar vs. 
English or American and unfamiliar; it considerably enhances their language awareness and 
cognitive development leading to a higher tolerance of differentness. T o reach such a level of 
advanced intercultural understanding, classroom discussion must start from students’ own 
reading, since only their readings can show what elements of the text and concepts involved 
in its understanding need further examination. Follow-up reading instructions can then focus 

on modifying and expanding their cultural filter in an organised and consistent manner and 
showing the complexity and importance of better intercultural understanding that makes it 
possible to see the different constellation of personal relations. 
Basing literature teaching on students’ response and establishing actual student responses 
are therefore particularly important when literature is taught in the intercultural contexts of 
foreign languages in which the differences in reading must be expected to increase because 
of culturally specific horizons of readers’ expectations, their different intertextual experiences 
and concepts of reality, of human relations, of what (and how it is) tellable, or rather, should 
not be expressed in words. Such literature teaching that contributes to students’ knowledge 
of the multiple uses of language and challenges them to see that there are multiple ways of 
viewing the world, people and their relationships and, at the same time, persuades them of 
the importance of meeting this challenge, can only be reached on the basis of a thorough 
discussion and understanding of students’ own readings. #at is why only such approaches 
are really functional and persuasive for the students. If the teacher is attentive to such readings 
and to their heterogeneity, the teaching of the same text will be a challenge raising different 
problems with different students for her/him also. Seeing the challenges of such reading and 
teaching can ultimately unite the students and the teacher in the realisation that there exist 
different possibilities of making sense of human life and different ideas about what matters 
in it. In our global yet still divided world this realisation as made possible by fully developed 
intercultural awareness is invaluable if we want to contribute to making our world a more 
liveable place for all peoples, a place with less hate and more empathy, if not love. Last but 
not least, this realisation is prerequisite to understanding and valuing cultural and linguistic 
diversity and living with it without unnecessary conflict. 
When fully aware of the possibilities of the presented positive impact of literature reading and 
teaching, students can easily be persuaded of the importance of reading and of well developed/
critical literary competence for making sense of their ever more complex multicultural world 
of countless choices. #rough their own reading of literary texts they can come to understand 
how language is used in making sense of the world and their experience of it, and in the 
understanding of different cultures along with their own. In the light of such possibilities 
student-centred literature teaching has a definable and defendable function to perform in the 
world in spite of its ever more visually oriented culture. 
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