Local SettingIn the PAFTE 2004 seminar, one of the speakers reported that majority of the teachers still depend on traditional classroom methods in spite of the emerging technology today. Instruction is still facilitated in conventional ways: the use of textbook learning, rote learning, spoon feeding technique, rote memorization, and learning which is limited to the two covers of the books and the four walls of the room.A typical class can be described as having one teacher who directs all activities, and presents knowledge in discrete parts to be passively ingested by students and to be recalled later on a test.

Cleary, these practices should already be a thing of the past since they are obsolete and antiquated. While the traditional method ranks last among the teaching methods in terms of the desirable learning outcomes, it is still popular to a great member of teacher.The advocates of the traditional approaches to teaching literature consider students as empty containers to be filled by the knowledge imported by an omniscient teacher. The practitioners of these approaches normally bombard students with biographical information about the author, political, religious and philosophical ideas related to the text and explaining rhetorical devices and figures of speech such as metre, rhyme, metaphor, alliteration, assonance and the like. But the proponents of the language-based approach believe that studying the language of literary text will help to integrate the language and literary syllabus more closely. Students can develop a response to literature through examining the linguistic evidence in the text. Rather than being passive recipients, the techniques used in this approach urge them to be active participants expressing their own conclusions and interpretations of a literary text.

Reading is not just a single skill but a combination of many skills and processes in which the readers interact with printed words and texts for content and pleasure. Through reading, one can teach writing, speaking, vocabulary items, grammar, spelling and other language aspects. There are some essential goals of reading such as enabling students to understand the world, growing their interests, and finding solutions to their own problems. The use of literature as a technique for teaching both basic language skills (i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language areas (i.e. vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation) is very popular within the field of foreign language learning and teaching nowadays

Currently many schools are concerned about how to address the needs of students who have difficulty reading and understanding extended text.

So it can be seen that content knowledge is the most important factor in the learning process of reading comprehension.

For fearlessly depicting the corruptions and abuses by the Spanish clergy and colonial government during the Spanish regime in the Philippines, the two novels arehistorically very significant. Basically a social sketch of the country then, the Noli and Fili reveal the true setting and condition of the Filipino society in the era.As essential source of sociological and anthropological studies, the books provide rich insights into the culture of the 19th and 20th century Philippines. Their realistic depictions expose a conflicted colonial society seriously split between the oppressors and the suffering local slaves. The novels characters mimic the various elements and types of individuals in that society. Furthermore, they show favorable positive traits of the natives then like the sense of gratitude, the fidelity of women to their loved ones, and the yearning for freedom and equality.In 1956, the Philippine Congress passed the Rizal Law (Republic Act 1425) requiring all levels of Philippine schools to teach as part of the curriculum the heros two novels.

Today, El Filibusterismo is a mandatory reading among high school students and is required by law to be taught in public and private universities in the country. Though originally written in Castilian Spanish, translations in English, German, French, Japanese and Filipino languages are available. - See more at: http://ffemagazine.com/el-filibusterismo-the-making-of-a-revolution/#sthash.ZyWAKUXo.dpuf

Teaching literature to Modern Language students constitutes an enormous challenge nowadays. 'A' level Spanish teachers are becoming increasingly discouraged from teaching literature to their students, with the result that, at Sheffield, we are often faced with the prospect of having to teach students who have no prior experience of studying literary texts. For example, out of a group of about 60 first-year Hispanic Studies students in 2002, only 15 reported that they had studied Spanish literature and, in my second-year literature class in 2003, 60% of (29) students did not have an 'A' Level in English.This situation is aggravated by the fact that apparently students have been conditioned to believe that literary study is composed of black and white certainties. This attitude may be traced back to 'A' level courses, which, through their use of multiple-choice questions, lead students to expect their answers to be simply right or wrong. It is hardly surprising that they are extremely disconcerted when they discover, at University, that radically different interpretations of a literary work may be equally valid. Furthermore, many students are not accustomed to reading on a regular basis, and are, therefore, unlikely to have highly developed critical skills.