Page 173 - Getting of the fence

Second, the majority of the students perceive the EFL literature lessons primarily through the lens of their language course (Chapter 4 and 5). This means that students predominantly find Language factor elements such as ‘Language skills’, ‘Vocabulary and idioms’, and ‘Grammar and syntax’, important in their EFL literature lessons. This is perhaps not surprising, considering the fact that in Dutch secondary education, the literature component is part of the EFL curriculum, which is language skills-based. Interestingly, despite the fact that the students’ primary objective appears to be linguistic and improving their language proficiency, the majority of students mention multiple approaches when asked about the benefits of EFL literature lessons.
Third, we found a large variation regarding which factor students find important both at student and at school level. This variation in student perception was also visible in their answers to the single open question in Chapter 4 when looking at which approach they mentioned: There were students whose answers fell into either one, two, three, or four approaches in various combinations. Furthermore, the students’ answers seem to suggest that they value either a combination of the Literature and Personal Development factors or a combination of the Language and Personal Development factors. In other words, the Personal Development factor appeared to be of importance to students.
The fourth and final major finding concerns the level of student motivation in
the EFL literature lessons, which we operationalized in their level of engagement
and how important they value the EFL literature lessons (Chapter 5). The results 7 showed that students with a relatively high level of engagement generally also
show a high level of perceived importance and vice versa. Furthermore, the results
indicate that students who value the Literature factor highly show a high level of
engagement. Whether or not students value the Language factor highly does not
seem to have an impact on their levels of engagement or disaffection. In other
words, the majority of the students value the Language factor in EFL literature
lessons highly but decidedly engaged students value the Literature factor.
7.2.4 Research question 4: How is EFL literature currently approached in Dutch secondary education?
In Chapters 2 and 6 we focused on the question how literature is currently approached in EFL lessons. In Chapter 2, we reported the results of a study in which we collected survey data (n = 106 EFL teachers). Teachers were asked to indicate how much time they spend, on average, on the four approaches of the
Summary, discussion, and conclusion
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