In a different context (Learning to learn, see Chapter 13) we noted that, in addition to enabling the learners to satisfy their estimated needs, a course designed for Vantage will ‘inevitably do other things as well’. Some of these things may (have to) be deliberately planned for in the course. ‘Learning to learn’ is one of these; the acquisition of adequate compensation strategies (see Chapter 12) is another. Other things, however, will automatically follow from the experience of learning for Vantage without any provisions having been made for them in the course offered to the learners and even without their having been explicitly included in the objective concerned. They are simply what we may regard as ‘by-products’ of a successful learning experience. This does not mean to say that they could not figure more centrally, or even be the main concern, of other objectives for foreign language learning with a different orientation from that of the Waystage–Threshold–Vantage series. In the present chapter, by way of exemplification, we shall briefly discuss two of such by-products: literary appreciation and mediation skill.

By ‘literary appreciation’ we mean here ‘the ability to understand literary products and to experience – possibly even to evaluate – their impacts’. In the objective for Vantage, notably in Chapter 9 (Dealing with texts), nothing is said about literary texts. Nor, however, are they explicitly excluded.