The effect of including literary texts in English language instruction in Slovenia

Burazer, Lara (author), Skela, Janez (author)

This article provides an overview of the Slovenian syllabuses for English as a school subject over the past 80 years, focusing on literary texts as content. The findings are correlated with trends in ELT of the relevant periods, which are typically mirrored in the contents and structure of formally approved and widely used coursebooks in Slovenia. The results are compared with recent trends in ELT in Slovenia using two methods: a) an analysis of the extent of literary content featured in a selected corpus of formally approved contemporary English coursebooks used in Slovenian primary schools, and b) an analysis of Slovene primary school students’ success in standardized testing. Finally, a synthesis of these analyses is provided to shed light on the effectiveness of including literary content in ELT, as reflected in the primary school students’ standardized test scores.

• Language: English
• Keywords: Slovenian syllabuses, literary texts, ELT trends, coursebooks, standardized testing
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 38-52
• Numbering: Vol. 18, no. 3
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-181946
• UDC: 811.111'243:37.091.3:82
• ISSN on article: 1916-4742
• DOI: 10.5539/elt.v18n3p38
• COBISS.SI-ID: 227389187
• Publication date in RUL: 20.04.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: English language teaching
• Publisher: Canadian Center of Science and Education
• ISSN: 1916-4742
• COBISS.SI-ID: 2089059

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: slovenski učni načrti, literarna besedila, trendi v didaktiki angleščine, učbeniki, nacionalno preverjanje