Can Simplified Literature Deliver Literary Properties as Much as Original Texts?: Exploring Simplified Adaptation of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Can Simplified Literature Deliver Literary Properties as Much as Original Texts?: Exploring Simplified Adaptation of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

The present study explores the features of language and content of the simplified The Great Gatsby and attempts to find its efficacy for literary response practice aiming at adult learners with low English proficiency. The original text is challenging for less proficient learners to read because its figurative language and syntactic complexity often impede reading and understanding the text completely. The simplified version is easier to read because the language of its original text is paraphrased to easier expressions. However, it contains limited literary properties: the descriptions of setting and minor characters are reduced or omitted. Nevertheless, the writer of the simplified text tries to make the most of its original text on major episodes and illustrations of the protagonists, enabling readers to concentrate more on plots and themes. Simplified literature gives a chance for less proficient readers to appreciate the texts by fluent reading with less language difficulty. Therefore, simplified adaptations of classic novels are useful for less proficient adult learners to develop their linguistic ability and suit their intellectual capacity of literary appreciation. This study attempts to locate the position of simplified literature in the instruction of literary texts and suggests that it can be a preliminary stage to make less proficient EFL learners fluent, independent readers of original texts in the future.