Page 179 - Getting of the fence
P. 179

                                that students perceive EFL literature lessons with a strong content focus primarily as another opportunity to master these language skills. A different reason for students’ lower scores on the Text, Context, and Reader approaches could be linked to literature teaching as part of the Dutch language lessons. Students could perceive these approaches as less beneficial for their EFL lessons because they are also part of their Dutch literature lessons and therefore do not have an additional value for their EFL literature lessons.
The results showed that the Text approach is the dominant approach in
Dutch EFL literature lessons, followed by the Context approach. One reason for
this dominance could be the Core Curriculum Standards for foreign language
literature teaching: two of the three standards include literary text types (Text
approach), literary terms (Text approach), literary history (Context approach), and
a historic perspective (Context approach) (Meijer & Fasoglio, 2007). It is therefore
perhaps not very surprising that these two approaches are dominant. It could
also be argued that the Text and Context approaches are easier to teach and test
because they concern more objective facts in comparison to the Reader approach.
Questioning and grading students on their reading experience and personal development can be perceived as more complicated compared to, for example,
literary terms and information about the historical context. Another reason could
concern curricular heritage in two different ways. First, most EFL teachers are
educated in a context where literature and language teaching are separated. Just as
literature lessons generally do not include a Language approach, regular language 7 lessons generally do not include literary texts. Second, teaching is often influenced
by how teachers were taught themselves, in secondary school, at university, but
also during their teaching education. In other words, when a teacher was taught
literature primarily through a Text approach, chances are that this heritage plays
an important part in their own teaching practice.
Our third question concentrates on the need to reconcile the previously described discrepancies. Is it, for example, necessary to convince students that the Text approach is most beneficial and important? This is, after all, what Dutch teachers spend most of their time in the literature lessons on. According to Vermunt and Verloop (1999), a detailed analysis of lessons might reveal that learning tasks can be “very one-sided and more often reflect teachers’ personal styles than students’ needs” (p. 277). It could be argued that, in our case, we indeed located a blind spot, i.e. an over-representation of the Text approach. Or do we need to teach literary texts primarily through a Language approach because this is what
Summary, discussion, and conclusion
 177
 












































































   177   178   179   180   181