Literature

./. in the EFL class:

a study of goal-achievement
incongruence
Ayse Akyel and Eileen Yalcin

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the present state of literature teach-
ing in the English departments of five selected private higher schools (Lise)
in Istanbul, through an analysis of student and teacher responses to ques-
tionnaires. The findings of this paper may yield further insights for imple-
menting literature-teaching strategies in non-English-speaking countries
like Turkey, whose educationalsystems are wavering between modern and
traditional practices, but whose syllabuses and examinations often include
English literature. The survey conducted has shown that a careful analysis
of learner needs is usually neglected; that there is limited use of communi-
cative language teaching methodology which brings to the foreground
learner-learner interaction; and that, as in another recent survey (Hirvela
and Boyle, 1988: 179), students’ attitudes and goals in terms of linguistic
and literary competence are not given due importance in curriculum
design.

The survey The schools involved in the survey have one year of intensive English and
English as the medium of instruction for maths and science at the junior
and senior high school levels. The first year of English study in the senior
high schools in Turkey (Lise I) is generally devoted to further developing
the task (begun in junior high school) of building comprehension and
fluency in reading. This is done by giving students a large variety of liter-
ary forms for study.
Two different sets of questionnaires were prepared, one for teachers (22
total responses), and another for one section of Lise II students in each
school (150 total responses). The second-year students of senior high
school (Lise II) were selected for the sample because at this stage it is
commonly assumed that they have reached the necessary level of reading
comprehension for a gradual development of independent literary
responses. The following areas were investigated:
1 goals of teachers;
2 student reactions to the specific contributions of prose fiction, drama,
and poetry, in developing linguistic and communicative competence
(hereafter language competence) and literary competence;
3 student reaction to text selection;
4 classroom techniques;
5 teacher and student evaluations of the programme.
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 Teachers’ goals The investigation focused on whether there was agreement in principle
on the major objectives of the English programme in the five schools
selected.
Most of the teachers (19 out of 22) indicated that their objectives were:
a. to broaden students’ horizons by giving them a knowledge of the clas-
sics of literature;
b. to improve student’s general cultural awareness;
c. to stimulate students’ creative and literary imagination and to develop
their appreciation of literature;
d. to introduce students to masterpieces in British and American liter-
ature as an educative experience, and to add to students’ knowledge of
the world at large.
Objectives a, b, and d can be summarized as exposing students to liter-
ature to achieve an educational and cultural goal. Objective c, in its
broadest sense, refers to the development of literary competence.
One striking point is that among the stated aims of the teachers in this first
group, there is no mention of the development of language competence.
This could imply that the teachers either presuppose that the develop-
ment of language competence has been completed or that language
improvement will automatically be a by-product of literary studies. How-
ever, taking into consideration the fact that the students in these schools
are somewhere between upper-intermediate and advanced levels of com-
petence, (i.e. TOEFL scores ranging from 400 to 550), any attempt to
realize the above aims would be too challenging a task unless there were
considerable attention paid to making the students’ incomplete know-
ledge of the linguistic system more literature-sensitive.
Another group of teachers (5 out of 22) advocated the inclusion of a lan-
guage-based approach to literature in their programme. These teachers
cited as a secondary objective that the students should reach an advanced
level of oral and written competence by means of the literary texts
chosen. Teachers in this group seem to feel insecure about the meth-
odology and techniques of using literature to achieve this aim, but do sup-
port the idea that literary texts can be treated both as ‘art’ and as a
resource for language development. In other words, they seem to support
the well defended argument that using literary texts just for ‘exploring
usage’ results in an inappropriate relationship between the text and the
reader (see, for example, McKay and Moulding, 1986).
A last group of teachers (3 out of 22) focused on a more academic objec-
tive, which was to enable students to reach the proficiency level at which
they can handle further university studies in English with ease. These
teachers felt that the literature syllabus could not meet this aim. This view
was supported in greater numbers by students in the students’
questionnaire.
Student reactions Our results showed that students seem to feel the most effective literary
form for helping them develop their linguistic skills and cultural aware-
ness is the novel. Drama is regarded as the most effective in helping stu-
dents improve oral expression and gain self-confidence in using English.
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 In contrast, poetry and short stories are cited by students as not having
much effect on language skills, poetry making the least significant contri-
bution to language skills development.’ On the whole, the results of the
survey showed that only in the rare case where teachers demonstrated
their own interest in poetry and were able to communicate their enthusi-
asm to their students was poetry accepted by students as useful. Students
found short stories boring, unrelated to their interests and generally
unsatisfying, perhaps because short stories are under-represented in the
syllabuses of the five schools in the survey. Out of 23 books, there are only
3 books of short stories and these were selected by the teachers of 2
schools while the teachers in the other 3 chose to study only novels and
plays (see Appendix).

Student reaction to The texts included in the Appendix reflect very clearly the high literary
text selection aims and aspirations of teachers. These texts are representative and
chosen to familiarize students with the great masterpieces of British and
American Literature. The survey demonstrated a link between students’
language proficiency and their attitudes towards literature. Students who
felt that they had a very good command of English appreciated the liter-
ary texts selected. They ‘enjoyed becoming acquainted with the works of
well known authors, learning more about American and English history,
cultural values, ideas, and views.’ On the other hand, the majority of stu-
dents - those who rated their English ability as ‘average’ - found many of
the novels, short stories, and plays ‘too long’, ‘boring’, and ‘too hard’.
They would prefer to read more books that have themes related to youth,
friendship, and changing social values.
The students’ negative attitude to most of the texts in their literature syl-
labuses confirms the view that ‘a text which is extremely difficult on either
a linguistic or cultural level will have few benefits’ (Vincent and Carter,
1986: 214), and that learners are most motivated, most open to language
input, when their emotions, feelings, and attitudes are most engaged
(Tomlinson 1986: 34).

Classroom Teachers were asked to indicate how they managed and spent their time
techniques in literature classes. The responses indicate that teachers in general tend
to follow the practice of utilizing class time in Lise II more for teacher-
centred activities such as informative background lectures, guided ques-
tions for the understanding of the text, reading the text (mostly aloud) in
class, and writing text-related essays (see Table 1).
Although there is no consistent departmental policy on the integration of
language skills with literature teaching, some teachers (5 out of 22) have
taken the decision to devote 10 to 15 per cent of their classroom time to
specific activities which enhance language skills development. These
include one or more of the following activities: vocabulary expansion (by
preparing or having students prepare vocabulary lists prior to reading or
discussing the text); the study of idioms and colloquial expressions; the
clarification of grammatical difficulties; and rephrasing exercises, using
sentences from the literary texts.
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 Table 1: How teachers Number of teachers
managed literature About 50 per cent Below 50 per cent
classes of class time of class time

Reading text aloud 12 10

Reading text silently 13 9

Teacher-centred text comprehension 15 7

(guided questions, informative
background lectures; if others, specify.)

Student-centred group activities 8 14

(debates, discussions; if others, specify.)

Vocabulary-building exercises - 22

Linguistic investigation activities at word, 19 3

sentence, and discourse level

Writing exercises using the text as model 7 15

(paraphrasing, rewriting, cloze exercises;
if others, specify.)

Evaluative essays on texts 2 20

Students reported that their oral abilities (including pronunciation and

fluency) and self-confidence in the use of English seemed to improve most
in relation to play reading and acting activities. Students perceived most
improvement in reading comprehension and relatively less improvement
in written expression with teacher-centred activities related to the novel,
and indicated a general lack of meaningful progress in their written
expression overall. This can perhaps be attributed to the small amount of
time allocated to specific writing improvement tasks in Lise II.
Evaluations of the Teachers reported that students are not able to close the gap between
programme their developing intellectual ability and their ability to put their thoughts
into writing in English. They also reported that students seem to have an
insufficiently sophisticated grasp of language and lack experience in orga-
nizing thoughts into logical essays. The teachers’ views confirmed our
general findings which were that there are discrepancies between teach-
ers’ goals and achievements; and between students’ needs and teachers’
goals.
It is possible that teachers cannot remedy these problems-partly
because they do not appreciate or recognize either the role of student
needs in a successful management of communicative activities, or the
importance of literature as a content area in the English language pro-
gramme. Nor do they always exploit specific classroom activities which
promote the development of cognitive processes. These would include
analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Student attitudes to the literature programme support this assessment of
the teachers’ problems. They wanted language skills to be more inter-
locked with the literary programme, and classwork to involve more dis-
cussion and debate type of activities on the meaning and interpretations
of literary texts. They were interested in more classes in composition
skills to prepare for and practise appropriate written expression of ideas
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 and views on literature; more variety and contact with discourse styles in
magazines and newspapers; and independent research and activities to
develop individual talents and interests and broaden cultural horizons.

Comments and Our survey leads us to make three broad recommendations for the teach-
recommendations ing of literature in the sorts of schools we refer to.

A variety of The first suggestion is that there should be a more balanced selection of
classroom texts classroom texts and activities. The texts should be of all types and genres,
and should take into consideration the linguistic level and the interests of
the students. Even though the students reported unfavourably on the use-
fulness of short stories, it might be worth experimenting with a much
wider range of stories than they have been exposed to, and perhaps
replacing the two or three long novels that they have had to read with a
more varied selection of several short stories and short novels.
These could be more rewarding for students, provided that teachers
choose stories with a variety of themes that can be exploited for group
activities. In this way, there is a greater chance of finding something to
appeal to different individual tastes and interests. In addition, because
stories can be completed in a few lessons, students can get a sense of
achievement at having come to the end without losing sight of the text as a
coherent whole. As for poems, students in these schools are so put off
poetry as a result of trying to decipher the archaic language and com-
plicated prosody of Ottoman poetry (as distinct from contemporary
Turkish poetry) that they refuse to have any more to do with poetry in any
language. Yet a carefully selected poetry syllabus as part of the literature
programme, with the aim of encouraging the students first to enjoy poems
and then perhaps to analyze them, could have the additional bonus of
encouraging students to read and enjoy more modern poetry in their own
language.

A variety of out-of- Secondly, we suggest that there should be a planned approach to the
class texts selection of a variety of texts suitable for out-of-class reading (also known
as ‘extensive reading’ see Moody, 1971). Activities based on out-of-class
texts can be practised on an extra-credit basis. Students may choose one
or two texts from an out-of-class reading list providing a large amount of
choice and reflecting learners’ interests (Hafiz and Tudor, 1989: 10). Out-
side-reading materials can provide practice at sustained, rapid, self-
directed activities, and can encourage independent research and activi-
ties to develop individual interest fields, broadening the students’ cultural
horizons and appreciation of literature.
As indicated earlier, students at the Lise II level feel a strong need to
develop their language competence, especially with regard to writing.
Literature as a content area can be used to enrich students’ awareness of
the linguistic and rhetorical structure of literary discourse. However, to
achieve the aim of preparing students for critical analysis and proficiency
in the skills of academic discourse, a simultaneous programme of a non-
literary nature seems to be necessary. This view supports the argument
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 that studying literature in ‘regular conjunction with other discourse types’
helps the students to identify and understand the operations of language
for different communicative functions (see, for example, Widdowson,
1983: 34; Short and Candlin, 1986: 94).

Improve classroom Thirdly, we suggest that there should be a major attempt by teachers to
techniques develop techniques appropriate to their students’ programme of literary
and non-literary studies. Students are so bombarded with the teachers’
own views of the focus of the literary text - for example, through inform-
ative background lectures or teacher-prepared comprehension ques-
tions - that they do not feel the need to call on their own experience to
respond to the text. Further, students do not seem to benefit as they
should from the few language-based activities which are aimed at con-
textualizing their knowledge of language patterns through use of the liter-
ary text itself as the model.
To help students bridge the gap from teacher-sequenced and directed
activities to the efficient processing of the text, the following framework is
suggested:
Activate students’ background knowledge of the content area of the text.
This can be done by focusing on classroom activities which aim to initiate
an independent literary response to the text without reference to extra-
textual information. This can be realized by asking students to discuss and
write about the most striking features of the text they are asked to read at
home. These features can be anything, ranging from likes and dislikes to
characterization, theme, point of view, and tone, depending on the level
of the literary and language competence of the student. At this stage stu-
dents can, to a certain extent, be encouraged to look up the meanings of
unfamiliar lexical items that are related to their focus of attention.
Improve students’ awareness of the linguistic and rhetorical structure of the
text. The teacher can devise various oral and written text-based language
activities to help students see how, on the lexical and syntactic level, the
choices made by a writer are significant to the extent that they exclude
other options. These activities can be chosen from among those that have
already entered the communicative language-teaching classroom and are
applied to the teaching of literature in ELT classes (see, for example, Col-
lie and Slater, 1987; Gower and Pearson, 1986; Carter and Long, 1987;
and Maley and Moulding, 1985). Students can learn to see the signific-
ance of the writers’ linguistic and rhetorical choices in classroom dis-
cussions of specific linguistic and rhetorical clues in the text and thereby
develop their ability to talk and write more clearly and cogently about
them. In that context, the role of the teacher can be threefold: during
group discussions, teachers can take notes on areas of misunderstanding
in students’ inferences and assumptions on the text. They can give the
necessary background information related to the author and the text to
help students understand why the writer says what he or she says. Teach-
ers can also clarify the underlying meaning of texts by devising teacher-
guided group discussions on the inaccurate assumptions and inferences of
the students which were previously noted. In these ways, the teacher can
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 bridge the gap between students’ content schemata and the underlying
meaning of the text (Carrell, 1984: 47).
We believe that, if taken up, our recommendations will improve both the
literary and language competence of students, provided that the liter-
ature syllabus is an accurate reflection of student needs and that class-
room activities are primarily student-centred.
Received September 1989

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Appendix
A list of literary texts on the syllabuses of Lise II Eileen Yalcin, adjunct lecturer in the School of Edu-
English programmes in selected schools. cation at Bosphorus University, is involved in teacher
Booth, M. (ed.) Contemporary British and North training in the Department of English Education and
American Verse London: Oxford University Press teaches courses in TEFL methodology and Materials
(1981). Development.

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