Page 93 - Getting of the fence
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                                Students’ perspective on the benefits of literature lessons
 4.4 Findings
Table 4.3 presents the percentage of the total number of answers for each of the four approaches.
Table 4.3 Overview of the 2361 answers of Dutch secondary school EFL students (n=635)
 Positive Negative (94%) (6%)
78 2
517 10 272 4 909 4 442 117
Total
80 (5%)
527 (29%)
276 (15%)
913 (51%) 4
 Four approaches 1796 Text TextTeText
Context Reader Language
Related to English/ literature 559 Not related to English/literature 6 Total no. of answers 2361
We were able to code 1796 answers in one of the four approaches. More than half of these answers (51%) fitted into the Language approach, followed by the Context approach (29%), the Reader approach (15%) and finally the Text approach (5%). A total of 559 answers were formulated too generally to fit into one of the four approaches but was nevertheless related to English or English literature, such as: ‘It creates more depth in the English lessons.’ Only six answers (0.25% of the total) were not related to English or English literature. These included the comprehensible ‘I prefer mathematics’, and the rather obscure (and again, probably facetious) comment, ‘beer’. It is worth noting that, despite the positive framing of our single open question in which we asked the students to write down the benefits of EFL literature education, 137 answers were formulated in a negative way, such as ‘Listening to boring stories’. Some students did mention specific elements of the Comprehensive Approach, but then gave an explanation how these were not regarded as beneficial, such as: ‘Literary history; I do not see the benefits of this. It does not contribute to Dutch society. Nobody will blame you if you don’t know this. The time we spend on literary history can be better spent on something that does contribute to society.’
In order to find out to what extent the students’ answers encompassed the different elements of the Comprehensive Approach, we also calculated the number of approaches each student mentioned.
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