Introducing Literature to an EFL Classroom: Teacher’s Presentations and Students’ Perceptions

• Published in: Journal of language teaching and research 2010-01, Vol.1 (1), p.53
• Main Author: Tseng, Fan-ping
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Classrooms; Education; English as a second language instruction; Experiments; Genre; Language; Linguistics; Novels; Researchers; Second language teachers; Student attitudes; Studies; Teachers; Teaching; Writers; Young adult literature
• ISSN: 1798-4769; 2053-0684
• DOI: 10.4304/jltr.1.1.53-65

[...]these professionals' preferences of literature might not be similar to students', and their assumptions of which literary text will be motivating and appropriate for students might not always be correct. Since students are the main beneficiary of literature teaching, and investigations or surveys of students' attitudes toward literature are also less conducted in research (Davis, Gorell, Kline & Hsieh, 1992), it is worthwhile to investigate students' attitudes toward literature and their preferences over different literary genres. [...]literature in music, pictures, or films might motivate students to read literature in print. [...]with the available literature-related audio books (e.g. CDs and MP3s), picture books, and DVDs, students in this experiment were given opportunities to appreciate some literary works presented in other media. Analyses of the participants' responses to a questionnaire showed that most of them held positive attitudes toward foreign language literature. [...]two factors were found to be significantly related to their attitudes toward literature study, namely, the amount of leisure reading done in the foreign language, and the preferred learning styles, such as being given opportunities to express their personal opinions, to look for the underlying meaning of the text, and to read about people and experiences different from their own. Students might have the preconception that Shakespeare's plays are full of archaic words and are difficult to read and understand. [...]being EFL high school students, they might consider it enough to know the storyline of the play through a plot summary, and do not want to venture the original text.