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Abstract
Keywords
Abstract
As the reflection of the target culture, literature has an important role in foreign language teaching process. However language teachers do not use it in their classes and students do not pay attention to it because they both think that it is difficult to study. Literature and Language Teaching courses in the curriculum of ELT departments aim at students’ developing awareness in the field of literature and improving skills how to use literature to teach English. During the terms, students are exposed to literary texts from different genres and they are wanted both to study and to teach these texts in EFL classes. In this qualitative study, the data were collected through an open ended- questionnaire conducted to 16 pre-service English teachers who have taken literature and language teaching classes in ELT. The aim of this research is to learn if pre-service teachers at ELT department recognize the importance of literature use in EFL and to learn their views on literature. According to the result of the study, it is clearly seen that pre-service English teachers are aware of the importance of literature use in the process of teaching a foreign language and they plan to use literary texts as teaching materials in their classes in the future.
Keywords
- 142 IJLET 2018, Volume 6, Issue 2
- to read classical novels, and to search about literature. This result is opposite to what Tseng (2010)
- discussions, Khatip and Rahimi (2012) support the idea of M2. M5 accepted literature as the reflection
- classes and most of the ideas here are compatible with those of Ghosh (2002), who thinks using
- √ √ √ Cultural differences √ Although participants gave different answers for the question that asks the benefits of studying literature, it is seen in Table 6 that the highest frequency is for its contribution to teaching the target culture. Most participants agreed that reading literature changes points of view. Three participants told that it improves general knowledge of the students while three others suggested that studying literature improves their literary competence. Similarly, Vural (2013) found in his research that literature made numerous contributions to students’ motivation, their writing and reading performance, their vocabulary knowledge and their autonomy in learning. Table. 6 Benefits of Studying Literature The question about what kind of feelings literature evokes in participants was answered differently: The highest frequency for the answers is for peace and excitement. Curiosity and feeling nice follow them with 3 answers. And two participants chose enthusiasm for the feeling they have when they think about literature. Others mention different feelings such as beauty, purity, boredom, shyness, happiness, complexity, imagination, creativity and authenticity. Although most of the participants use positive adjectives, two of them talked about boredom and shyness, which have negative meanings. Table 7. Feelings Literature Evokes in the Pre- Service Teachers peace √ √ √ √ excitement √ √ √ √ curiosity √ √ √ feeling nice √ √ √
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