Local works are on the cards in the list of texts students are to do for the examinations. They are seen as "more familiar in terms of context (and) style (as well as) more accessible to students (so that they can) share their insights (on the) work(s)." Indeed, the use of local dialectical terms in these works allows the students to have easier comprehensibility of the content as opposed to foreign works which have their own brands of dialects, completely foreign(pun) to the students.
Daren Shiau's Heartland, a coming-of-age tale about a Singaporean male, Haresh Sharma's Off Centre, which looks at the plight of mental patients and MOE-commissioned Island Voices are the choices offered. This move makes local literature something we can be proud of. We see it in a different light and not inferior to literature from other countries.
"There is space for a range and spectrum of texts...that we want to expose our students to." It's about time we did. Local literature can be enriching, tasteful and appealing too. "If you want to develop critical, analytical skills, you can't be exposed to only Wordsworth and Shakespeare, (though valuable and appealing) canonical texts (in themselves)." Literature, like English, is vast in its horizons and to limit our tastes to a certain type of literature is not a wise literary decision.
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