Focusing on point of view in literature enlarges students' vision and fosters critical thinking by dramatizing the various ways a situation can be seen. This is especially valuable in international classes, wherein students from traditional education systems are often unfamiliar with critical ways of reading, questioning, and analyzing texts. Short stories told from a single, limited point of view or through the eyes of one character make excellent vehicles for demonstrating the extent to which limited knowledge or an emotional stake in the events colors a character's vision. As students respond to stories and analyze their impressions, they see how their information was filtered through a point of view and limited by it; furthermore, they begin to see how their own experiences, cultures, or values affect their views. Once students see how point of view and sympathy can be manipulated in a story, they are assigned writing tasks requiring them to shift points of view in a given story or in a story of their own. They must speak with different voices, see with different eyes, which fosters more flexible reading, writing, and thinking. Moreover, contact with literature stimulates more imaginative student writing, and with it an increase of significant detail and appropriate figurative language.