Pedagogical Functions of Pictures and Classroom Exercises in Teaching English Literature in Basic and Post-Basic Education in Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the pedagogical functions of pictures and classroom exercises in the teaching of English literature at two fundamental levels of Nigeria’s educational system: basic education (primary school) and post-basic education (secondary school). In teaching English literature at the level of basic education, children literature is captured. It is the level at which pictorial representations/visual illustrations are brought to the fore not just because of the age-range of the learners, but also because the settings and socio-cultural underpinnings of such pictorial representations/visual illustrations make literature texts easy to mean to the target audience. Knowledge is best transmitted when linguistic and extralinguistic variables are deployed by literary writers to convey message in English literature texts for basic and post-basic education pupils/students; from authorial end, the process is indeed, creative indulgence and literary ingenuity in the three basic genres of literature: drama, prose and poetry. Picture books can be obtained in these three forms, even though they are common in prose texts (storybooks). Apart from facilitating textual interpretation, pictures promote reader-interest and reading culture at pre-basic and post-basic levels of education in Nigeria. At the Junior Secondary School level, pictures are occasionally used in English literature texts, whereas they are commonly used in English literature texts for younger learners (primary school pupils). The theoretical frameworks of this study are: Gokhan Cetinkaya’s (2015, p. 118) report and the Critical Theory. The study concludes that: pictures and classroom exercises do not only commune with the objectives of the curriculum of English literature in basic and post-basic education in Nigeria, but are also potent in the transmission of knowledge in terms of the basic skills to be learnt in the curriculum.