Abstract:

In order to attain their academic goals, students need to improve their second language proficiency in the four basic skills, i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing. Teachers of English language classes face not only with maximizing students' progress in these skills but at the same time, with keeping students interested and motivated in their lessons. This study is conducted at the Department of English Language/ College of Languages/ Salahaddin University-Hawler on freshmen students to investigate and evaluate the use of short stories in communication class. Drawing upon the importance of text choice and studying literature in the department, the results of the study tries to show that the narrative text genre and language proficiency level were influencing factors to an extent in not only improving the participants reading comprehension and writing skills but also helped the students to acquire native like competence necessary for communication.

Keywords:

Communication classes, Short Stories, English language.