Page 68 - Getting of the fence
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                                Chapter 3
 the student as the focus of the study of literature. When the literary text itself is the focus, a further distinction can be made between a Text approach (which includes the specific elements of literary terminology, genre, and character development) and a Context approach (concerned with elements of biographical information and historical, social, and cultural aspects of a text). When the student is the focus of the study of literature, a further distinction can be made between the Reader approach (whose elements are critical thinking skills and reading experiences) and the Language approach (whose elements are vocabulary, grammar, and the English language development of students). Each of the four approaches is operationalized in underlying practical elements mentioned above. This model was empirically tested in a sample of 106 Dutch EFL teachers (Chapter 2).
Even though the Comprehensive Approach was validated with EFL teachers and teacher trainers, when we presented this model we pointed out in our conclusion that the empirical validation of the model did not include the voice of the target audience, that is upper secondary school students. For this reason, we decided to further develop the model by including secondary school students’ perspectives through a learner-oriented discourse (Charteris & Smardon, 2018).
To summarise, in moving away from the traditional polarization in student voice research, the purpose of this research project was the validation of the Comprehensive Approach through two different perspectives: the Learners as data source and Learners in dialogue perspective. The Learner as initiator perspective was not included in this validation because our aim was to further develop and validate a foreign language literature teaching model that was the result of previous research (see Chapter 2). The lack of inclusion of the Learner as initiator perspective will be explored in section 3.4.
The research question of this study was formulated as follows: How and what can secondary school students contribute to the development of a foreign language literature teaching model through Learners as data source and Learners in dialogue perspectives?
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