Poe in the EFL classroom: On the pros and con

The connection between Poe and language education here presented stems from some learning activities carried out with students of English as a Foreign Language in the course of a wider research project on the possible benefits of literature in the foreign language class through text-based approaches to learning. In the following pages some of these activities based on two of Poe’s best-known short stories will be presented and their outcome will be critically commented. All the other possible examples of class work exploiting the “multimodal” side of what might be defined the contemporary Poe have been deliberately left aside. Space constraints curtailed the several alternatives and we opted for print-based materials since the many ways Poe’s works have been re-channelled through other media seemed the “easiest” choice for a teacher primarily in terms of raising learners’ motivation and attention. Indeed, the filmic/cinematic and the musical medium are much more appealing to contemporary learners than “good old” reading. But, as will hopefully be shown, the most “traditional” way of bringing Poe into the classroom, by exploiting his text-based short stories, has many pros to entice teachers and foster stimulating language learning activities. After some brief premises which serve to conceptualize the approach to Poe from the didactic point of view, a very broad plan of the general context of such work will be traced before moving on to Poe in the EFL classroom.