STUDENT VIEWS ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTION OF LITERARY AND CULTURAL-CONTENTTO LANGUAGE-LEARNING AT INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL

It is well-known that language students consistently rate the study of literature below the linguistic aspects of their foreign language cou rse. The reasons for this low priority accorded to literary studies ar e less well understood One plausible hypothesis was tested: Students d o not perceive literary studies to be useful in helping them to achiev e their primary goal of oral proficiency. This hypothesis can be suppo rted from the evidence of a survey of a group of intermediate-level un iversity students of French, but it does not account for all the findi ngs. The phenomenon of ''culture panic'' may be at least as important.