SUMMARY
This study attempts to examine the effect of using English literary texts in teaching the past simple and past perfect tenses of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the secondary schools' level, in Gadarif province, in Eastern Sudan. Teaching English through literary text was done adjacent to a school syllabus called Sudan Practical Integrated National English (SPINE) for comparison purposes. On the basis of an experimental approach, pre tests and post tests were taken by 85 students; 42 students were chosen for the experimental group and 43 for the control group. The purpose behind the pre-tests was to give information about the learners' knowledge of English grammar before any training took place. After the pre tests, the two groups attended language classes through two different methods (SPINE and Literature). The language classes continued for five weeks after which students in the two groups have taken post tests. Results obtained via the tests, revealed that the teaching of English past tenses through literature proved to be more effective than through SPINE. The experimental group has relatively higher scores in comparison to the control group. The computation of the coefficient correlation showed a significant difference.