Page 115 - Getting of the fence
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                                5.4.2 Research question 2: What level of importance do students ascribe to EFL literature lessons?
In order to find out how Dutch secondary school students regard EFL literature lessons, we investigated the perceived level of importance of the underlying elements of the Comprehensive Approach. Table 5.2 presents the descriptive statistics for the level of importance of each of the underlying elements, in descending order.
Table 5.2 Descriptive statistics for level of importance of the underlying elements of the Comprehensive Approach
Element
Language skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) Vocabulary and idioms
Personal development
Grammar and syntax
Literary taste
Historical, cultural, and social context Literary terminology
Story, plot, and theme
Literary history
Setting
Genre
Characters
Language development and variety Reading experience
Biographical information
n Level of Importance M (SD)
360 3.66 (.64)
359 3.41 (.73)
361 3.34 (.79)
359 3.24 (.91)
359 2.92 (.90) 5 361 2.85 (.86)
360 2.84 (.84) 359 2.80 (.88) 360 2.69 (.89) 360 2.55 (.90) 360 2.47 (.81) 357 2.36 (.86) 360 2.33 (.87) 359 2.29 (.87) 359 2.11 (.81)
Student motivation in the EFL literature lesson
    The results in Table 5.2 show that the students regard Language approach elements, i.e. ‘Language skills’ (M = 3.66, SD = .64), ‘Vocabulary and idioms’ (M = 3.41, SD = .73), and ‘Grammar and syntax’ (M = 3.24, SD = .91) as especially important during EFL literature lessons. What also stands out is that the students valued ‘Personal development’ and ‘Literary taste’ also quite highly (respectively 3.34 and 2.92). Even though each of the 15 elements was scored throughout the range – i.e. between 1 and 4 - indicating a wide range in the way students regard the importance of the elements, ten of the fifteen elements were, on average, regarded as (somewhat) important, with a score of 2.5 or above.
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