Focusing on the concept of otherness, Burwitz-Melzer (2001) conducted research using a short story involving twenty-four German students and one non-German student. The chosen text introduces a family of Mexican migrant workers, who are illegally moving from one harvest site to another in the United States, from the perspective of a young boy, a non-native speaker of English rejected by other children. Activities included a creative writing activity in which the students wrote the last scene of the story in the form of a dialogue. Three scenes were included in the study which show that the students were concerned about the boy’s situation, feelings, and future as well. It is also clearly reflected in the extracts that they understood the main conflicts: the tension between education and work, the migration problem, and the language barrier.

Focusing on another aspect of otherness, Merse (2015) posits that literary texts can also be used to “transport discourses of sexuality into the classroom” (p. 17). This seems to be timely, as together with other scholars (Gray, 2001; Seburn, 2018; Thornbury, 1991), he found that “the selection of literature for ELT classrooms follows heteronormative standards” and despite the increasing literary diversity, ELT still “privileg[es] literary texts that foreground heterosexuality and heteronormative genders”, widely overlooking sexual minorities (p. 17). As an example of dealing with LGBTQ issues in class, he presents a teaching unit he did in a university setting in Germany. He asked students to create an online blog about a literary text of their choice, fill the blog with their reflections on the piece and then present it in class. As the students were free to choose their text, they included texts revolving around different issues, e.g., homosexuality. One group chose the short story Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, which, according to the author’s observations, led to an engaging debate in class about sexual identities, sexual norms and reading LGBTQ literature in the ELT classroom. This shows that it is possible to engage students with discussions about topics that some students are already interested in using literary texts.

As it can be seen from the above examples, various controversial global topics can be addressed in class using literary texts. The success of such lessons usually depends on the selection of the right text and the students’ engagement with it. To engage students, it seems to be essential to deal with the text through learner-centred, interactive approaches and concentrate on what personal experiences they bring into the learning process, how they react to the characters’ feelings and the issues they face in these imaginary worlds.