Professor Colin MacCabe of the University of Exter School of English says that to truly know a language, you must know something of the literature of a language.

Literature is intellectually stimulating because a book allows a reader to imagine worlds they are not familiar with. This is done through the use of descriptive language. In order to understand, the reader will create their vision of what the writer is saying. In this sense, the reader becomes a performer or an actor in a communicative event.

Using literature versus a communicative textbook changes the learning approach from learning how to say into learning how to mean (grammar vs. creative thinking). Conversation-based programs tend to focus on