Page 53 - Getting of the fence

final English mark and the four approaches. The higher the percentage, the more lesson time is spent on the Text and Context approach.
Examining the data, we can conclude that the way foreign language literature
is approached in the lessons is mainly due to curricular factors and not teacher 2 demographics, which emphasises our interpretation of curricular heritage. This
brings us to a few limitations that should be highlighted. First of all, because this
study has employed self-report questionnaires, sampling relied on self-selection
of participants which could lead to a lack of representativeness and therefore to
biased estimates. Besides the obvious disadvantages of self-report questionnaires,
the retrospective focus of the questionnaire could have further obscured the data
since teachers were asked in May/June 2013 to reflect on their teaching from
September 2012 till May/June 2013.
2.5 Conclusion
The EFL literature component in Dutch secondary education is not so much an ‘unwanted guest’ or an ‘unwelcome ghost’ but it does occupy an uneasy position in the otherwise carefully structured foreign language curricula. The findings of this study indicate huge differences between foreign language teachers regarding the amount of time they spent on literature and, more specifically, on the four approaches. Furthermore, we can conclude that the way EFL literature is approached is related to several curricular factors and is not related to teacher demographics, with the exception of the relation between the age of the teacher and the time spent on the Context approach.
Our conceptualization of a Comprehensive Approach to foreign language literature teaching and learning in which we distinguish a Text, Context, Reader, and Language approach is a pragmatic interpretation of educational programmes that promote integrated curricula. In the current utilitarian setting with its focus on expository text comprehension, explicating the benefits foreign language literature can offer language students by implementing this Comprehensive Approach might be a good way to reverse the dwindling position foreign language literature is finding itself in.
We suggest that implementing a Comprehensive Approach to foreign language literature teaching and learning could enrich literature lessons as well as increase foreign language students’ understanding of contemporary literary
Exploring EFL literature approaches
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