Imparting 'literary competence' (understood here as a combination of skills involved in engaging with 'texts' of various kinds, among them film) has always been a core concern within German critical pedagogy. This article presents 11 aspects of literary learning, covering subjective involvement and the development of a text within the imagination; cognitive approaches such as awareness of perspectives, logic of action and linguistic style; and consciousness of genre-related and literary-historical classification. While these suggestions pertain in particular to the teaching of written literature, they are presented here as also having considerable significance for the teaching of film, and with a new introduction from German film education scholar Petra Anders.