Investigating the Literary Competence Development of the Learners of English at the Tertiary Level:
The Novel as a Model
A Research Paper by
Ahmed Khalis Shalan
Nawroz University
Abstract
This
research paper was dedicated to investigate the development of the ‘literary
competence of the EFL learners at 3 universities within Duhok Governorate area
during the academic-year 2014-2015.
Justifying
the need to this study in an introduction, stating the problem; specifying the
scope of the aims of the study, confining the study to certain limits, drawing
certain hypotheses which the study could argue about, making survey of some
related literature in the field, giving definition to the key terms of the
study, finally the researcher designed a questionnaire in order to use it as a
tool in investigating the development of the EFL learners’ assumed ‘literary
competence’.
EFL
Learners at 4 departments of English in 3 universities within the area of Duhok
Governorate were involved as a study-community.
Next,
selecting the research-sample, distributing the questionnaire forms, collecting
back the forms with feedback, analyzing the collected data, finally the
researcher gained important findings about the reality and the development of
the EFL learners’ ‘literary competence’ at the tertiary level.
The
findings not only paved the way to draw important conclusions about the
development of the tertiary level EFL learners’ ‘literary competence’
in novel study, but also they provided the possibility to generalize the
reached conclusions to include the teaching of poetry, short story, and drama; and
consequently, the conclusions led to put necessary recommendations on how to
improve the ‘literary competence’, and the ‘aesthetic taste
and mood’ of the EFL learners in general.
Key terms: Literary
awareness, literary competence, literary knowledge.
1-
Introduction
“The work in the foreign language, if it is to be truly literary
work, must be regarded as an extension of capacities already developed, at least
partially, in mother-tongue literary work, but these capacities will be refined
through contact with literature from a foreign culture.”
(Brumfit 200: 189)
Reading
or studying literature as part of an EFL or ESL curriculum has since
long been a matter of concern. On part of the learners it relates to reflective
merits such as the learning, or cultural, or aesthetic ones, while on part of
the pedagogues it relates to the communicative objectives set for the said
curriculum.
In
order to negotiate the meaning of any literary text read by the EFL learner,
they are supposed to have developed a minimum level of what we might, if it
were, call it a “literary competence” during the long period (almost
not less than 9 years) of exposure to ELL before they join the tertiary level.
Hence, scholars, in particular Culler (recited
in Lazar 2013, p. 12), argued that, by analogy with Chomsky's 'grammatical
competence', effective readers of literary texts are seen as to possess an
assumed 'literary competence' or 'literary awareness' as Sonia Zyngier called it (Watson &
Zyngier 2007 p. 194).
But
logically, any assumed 'literary competence', or 'literary
awareness' is not a notion which comes flying; it rather comes crawling
like a baby during a long time of literature-reading. So, it needs time to
mature into a fine tangible and sufficient proficiency in literature. But, a
matured literary competence could not be easily gained. This is, in
fact, because of many difficulties may face the literature teaching-learning
process, which the learner is going through. Aian Duff & Alan Maley (2003) made an attempt to diagnose the
following difficulties of teaching literature to the tertiary level EFL
learners:
-
Linguistic difficulty: This refers to syntactic complexity, lexical
density, or discoursal organization,
-
Text length difficulty: For some, longer texts appear more difficult. For
others shorter texts present more difficulties,
-
Cultural difficulties: It is difficult to the extent that it is clearly
impossible for the 'outsider' to share fully the range of references of an
'insider', so, cultural factors do offer difficulties,
-
References range difficulty: This is best exemplified by works such as Eliot's 'The Waste Land' which cannot
be fully appreciated without attached notes, and
-
Conceptual difficulty: This indicates the ideas the text conveys. William
Blake's poetry provides good examples of deceptively 'simple' writing, whereas
it so deep to understand easily.
(Duff & Maley 2003 p. 7)
However, while teaching an
introduction to English literature, the writer of this paper frequently heard
the EFL learners either grumbling or crouching about literature as a subject
taught in the tertiary level and its educationally-realistic usefulness,
because the majority of those learners, as Short and Candline described them,
are:
“ ... non-native school-leavers who rarely
equipped for the demands made upon them by the literary departments of
universities and colleges. They come with impoverished command of language, in
many cases, and little exposure to the reading of complex, connected text,
whether literary or non-literary." (Candline, ed.
2000: p. 92)
Culturally
speaking, as there is an opinion rest on the assumption that any early ‘literary
taste’ starts developing first through the contact between the individual
and his native-language literature, the above-mentioned Cndline’s argument, in fact,
stimulated and prompted the writer of this research-paper, as a pedagogue, to
investigate the freshman-learners’ (total of 120) opinions about:
-
Firstly, the whys
and wherefores that made them join a department of English, and
-
Secondly, how
far they are proficient in respect of their contact with their native-language
literature.
As
an initial step, a simply-designed open-ended inquiry form was made as in the
figure below:
No.
|
Item
|
|||||||
1
|
Frankly
speaking, would you tell why you have joined a department of English and if
you had any preconception about the expected difficulties in learning English?
|
|||||||
Always
|
Often
|
Sometimes
|
Rarely
|
Never
|
||||
2
|
Ticking one
of the boxes ahead, please show how far you have been used to read any kind
of literary-texts other than the literary texts you read in the secondary
school.
|
|||||||
3
|
Mention at
least the name of one of your native poets
|
|||||||
4
|
Mention at
least the name of one of your native short-story tellers.
|
|||||||
5
|
Mention at
least the name of one your native novelists.
|
|||||||
Figure No.1: Open-ended inquiry
Surprisingly,
the results of the inquiry have shown very significant indicatives of the
learners’ attitudes toward learning English and reading literature, which can
be summarized as follows:
1-
Variance
one:
-
65% of the students willingly wished to join
the Department of English; almost instrumentally motivated to learn English,
as a tool for achieve further purposes,
and equipped, to a certain extent, with preconceptions about the somewhat
expected difficulties of English language learning, but with very little
concern over matters related to literature, as Brumfit & describe them:
"…who have some understanding of literature as a
phenomenon in their own culture, but with inevitably limited language, originally
learnt with a more instrumental intention." (Brumfit & Carter 200: p.30)
-
16% of the learner willingly wished to join
the Department of English only just for appearances' sake; with
lesser preconceptions, if none at all, about the difficulties of learning EFL
and the related issues, because they are stimulated by motives based on, if it
were, 'gaining a so-called prestige of being in a foreign-language-class',
and
-
19% joined the Department of English unwillingly, because they
missed the chance to join another branch of study; either because of the
regulations of admission to university, or any other reason, and eventually
they find themselves studying English language against their will, i.e.,
to gain an academic degree whatever that is.
2- Variance 2:
The results of this showed the following:
Table No. 1
Total Stud. No.
|
Always
|
Often
|
Sometimes
|
Rarely
|
Never
|
|
Frequency
|
120
|
9
|
9
|
102
|
||
Percentage
|
120
|
7.5%
|
7.5%
|
85%
|
3-
Variances 3,4
and 5:
Table
No. 2
Variance
|
Total
Stud. No.
|
No.
|
Percentage
|
Name
|
1
|
120
|
15
|
12.5%
|
Ahmedi
Khani,
|
2
|
120
|
0
|
0%
|
Nil
|
3
|
120
|
0
|
0%
|
Nil
|
Paradoxically,
when the researcher asked the respondents on Variance 1 about how happened and
they knew Ahmedi Khani and if they ever read any verses of Khani, the
well-known Kurdish philosopher and poet, most of them replied that they knew
him by his statue which is raised-up in the heart of Dukok City, not by his
verses
Finally,
and significantly, such information gained from the afore-mentioned inquiry
would definitely be a good prompt to put the learners' literary
competence and their readiness to accept reading literature as part of
their English language-study on the table of discussion. Furthermore, in
addition to the difficulties diagnosed by Duff & Maley, it can also be
assumed, by close regular observation that:
"...
it is not possible to appreciate the world of literature unless the everyday
cultural background (the raw material which literature has used) has already
become familiar at an earlier level of learning."
(Littlewood, ed. 200: p.180).
Hence,
the writer of this paper argues that the assumed 'literary competence'
of learners of the type above-inquired should be in question.
Depending
on the results of the said inquiry as a rationale, and taking the novel as a
model, this paper is dedicated to identify the growth of any assumed 'literary
competence' of the EFL learners during the 4-year-college-study of the
novel at 3 universities in Duhok Governorate area.
2- Problem of the Study
As a matter of fact, neither all people like to read literature, nor all
the EFL learners incline to read or study literature as part of the fulfillment
of their study-duty. Furthermore, not only few numbers of EFL learners’
community even complain and express doubts about the educationally-justified usefulness
of reading any type of literature as part of an EFL curriculum. Similarly, unknowing
that it is inevitable to learn any language apart of its literature and culture,
some EFL learners might be heard, here and there, complaining: 'I came here to
learn English Language not to read English Literature!'
While teaching an Introduction
to English Literature Appreciation to the freshmen, hearing such complains,
the worker of this paper started sometimes to believe that the assumed 'literary
competence' of the EFL learners is not beyond doubts. So, it was
generally presumed that, with very few exceptions, most of the EFL learners,
joining a department of English, either demonstrate a modest standard of 'literary
competence', if not lacking such a quality at all. Hence, this study is
dedicated to study the growth, if any, of the EFL learners' literary-competence
(see the Introduction section above).
3- Aims of the Study:
Using the study of the novel as a model, the study aims at:
1- Identifying the general
standard of the tertiary level EFL learners’ 'literary competence'
at the universities in the area of Duhok Governorate.
2- Identifying any
significant differences in the literary competence standard among
Duhok Governorate universities' EFL learners.
3- Identifying any
significant differences in the 'literary competence' standard
among the EFL learners according to university, college, and gender.
4- Value of the Study:
The study value lies in its findings, which they would be of a great
help to the teachers of literature; providing them with significant benchmarks
about the growth of an assumed 'literary competence' of their
students, especially in respect of how to improve the standard of the literary-competence,
or in finding creative approaches to teaching literature. It would also
provide assistance to research-workers, especially to those who have concern
with such rarely-discussed topics of the literary-competence standard
of the EFL learners at the universities of Iraq, and in particular universities
of Kurdistan region.
5- Limits of the Study:
The study was limited to elicit the 'literary competence'
standard of the 4-year-college EFL learners in different departments of
English at universities located in Duhok Governorate/ Iraqi-Kurdistan
6- Hypotheses:
It was hypothesized that:
1-
The EFL learners, joining a college to study English language have very
poor standard of an assumed 'literary competence',
2-
No significant differences can be found the ‘literary competence’
standard between the EFL learners at 3 universities in Duhok Governorate area.
3-
No significant differences can be
found in the ‘literary competence’ standard among the EFL
learners at 4 colleges of 3 universities in Duhok Governorate area.
4-
The EFL learners at a tertiary level can develop and improve their 'literary
competence' throughout the 4-year-college-study,
5-
The EFL male-learners can develop better standard of 'literary
competence' than that of EFL female-learners.
It is also hypothesized that:
6-
In Duhok Governorate area universities, the tertiary level EFL learners
at any state-university can develop better standard of 'literary competence'
than that of their peers in the private-sector-universities, because the
formers join the university with a total of marks higher than that of the
latters, pursuant to the university-application-regulations in Kurdistan Region-Iraq.
7- Definition of Basic terms
1- Literary awareness:
It is the mental quality which depends on the activities which promote
student's sensitivity of the verbal aesthetic experience. (Zyngier 2007 p.195)
2- Literary education:
It is the process of enhancement, whereby the noticing process allows
additional information to enter the students' cognitive system and have the
potential to develop their interpretive abilities (Hanaure 2007 p.170)
4-
Literary
competence: The student's best ability to read and understand literary works
and enjoy its aesthetic appeals. In
terms of Psychology, Piclett, (ed- 2000: p. 278) call it 'literariness, and
defined it as "mental objects communally possessed and linked together by
some common essence . . . are of the same ontological status as the matter
studied in the physical sciences"
8- Related Literature:
As a matter of fact, to know what
stimulates the student to read a work of literature is an extremely sophisticated
and complicated matter, because many factors with details have to do with such
a sophisticated concern. Teachers of literature often meet EFL learners with
very little knowledge about the meant learners' tendency to understand and enjoy
the literature they read in the language classroom.
Hence, paying very little attention,
by the EFL teachers, to such an important matter of the students' attitudes
towards what they read in the lesson of literature, the lesson of literature has
in the recent decades become one of the core topics of the EFLT research-work
community. Consequently, a very considerable work of research, related to the
topic of the EFL learners' literary and aesthetic mode and literary education
has been going on. Being in a literary mode has technically become to be known either
as 'literary competence' (Prumfit & Carter 2000), or 'literary
awareness' (Zyngier, Fialho, and Parado Rios ed. 2007) or ‘literary
education’ (Hanauer ed. 2007). Therefore, 'literary competence'
has been taken to be "the student's best ability to read and understand
literary works and enjoy their aesthetic appeals" (see section 7 above).
In their Literature and Language
Teaching, (2000 p.15), C.J. Brumfit & R. A. Carter laid some parameters
of how the 'literary competence' can be defined. They argued that
literature provides language resources to be exploited to the full, and the
learner is given an active interactional role in making sense of such language
resources (Brumfit & Carter 2000 p.15). Thus, the opportunity is given to
the learners to make sense of a text which provides the status that helps them
to develop their 'literary competence'. But, they also
argued that although the students learning goes through an integrated language,
the literary study should form a core part of any suggested literature teaching
course. But, this is not and cannot be the whole story of teaching literature,
whether on part of the pedagogue or on part of the learners when developing an
assumed 'literary competence' (ibid p.16). This is, because a
value judgment of this may be affected by socio-historical factors which
reflects a particular ideology, as well as difficulties may face all teachers
of language and literature, in particular the teachers working in a situation
of teaching literature in an EFL
surroundings (ibid p.16). Among the said difficulties, they furthermore,
emphasized two important points. The first is that in the context of EFLT 'different
cultures' would value 'different things' for students from other
cultures. The second point is that teachers need to make provision for
sensitizing learners, or to develop their 'literary competence'.
Hence, Brumfit & Carter believed
that EFL literature teachers should create effective strategies of reading to
their students, but providing that such strategies should "form a
component of a culture specific set of norms and expectations which often need
to be explicitly taught while developing the 'literary competence''
(ibid p.18). And, in order to give both, the EFL learners and teachers, an
additional opportunity to develop a 'literary competence, they
even quoted from (Kachru 1983 a) the debate about what is called 'contact
literatures' which "exhibit stylistic and discoursal characteristics which
differ markedly from the traditional canon of English literature and bring with
them related culture-specific problems of interpretations" (ibid p.19).
They, furthermore, argued that:
"It is unreasonable to expect that non-native speakers to
approach literary texts in English with the intuitions of a native
speaker"
(ibid p.20).
Finally,
in order to promising a situation for the development of any 'literary
competence', they recognized that teachers of literature in EFLT
surroundings need to contextualize the linguistically and literarily integrated
syllabus by:
a- Following
linguistic and non-linguistic norms in text selection,
b- Using language-based methods, and
a-
Realizing that
some aspects of language organization may create problems more crucial than
others, especially in the case of EFL learners. (ibid
p.20)
On the other hand, in their
important article, Revisiting Literary Awareness, Sonia Zyngier, Olivia
Fiallho, and Patricia Andrea do Prado Rios (2007) put a question which needs a
crucial answer:
- Why Literary awareness?
In order to
give a reasonable answer, they argued that most of the EFL learners acquire a
rather transient knowledge about literature, because they, for their tests, rely
on a pool of dates and facts about novels and authors, which they mostly are
forgotten as soon as the examinee leave the examination whole, and the result
would be almost nothing in respect of building any kind of literary awareness
(henceforth
LitAw). So, they quoted from (Rosenblatt 1938) that any literary awareness
can be developed from the need to promote critical and autonomous readers who
could both experience the text (Rosenblatt 1938) and substantiate their
statements from the linguistic perspective (Zyngier, Fialho, and Parado
Rios-ed. 2007). And thus, the LitAw can be developed from a 'casual one to a
causal one and from random and intuitive to the systematic (Frye 1957, 1990
p.7-cited in Zyngier, Fialho, and Parado Rios-ed. p. 194).
However, (Zyngier, Fialho, and Parado
Rios-ed. 2007) put another question which also needs a crucial answer:
- Is there such a thing as mastery
of literary reading or should we to consider a variety of competences?
Then, adding
another question:
- Are first language readers more
competent than foreign language readers (Zyngier 1999)?
But, answering the
latter question they said that being a first language speaker does not mean
being a competent reader of literature (Zyngier, Fialho, and Parado Rios-ed.
2007 p. 195). Hence, they hold a study which indicates that LitAw owes much to
developments in language awareness (Sinclair 1985 p.7- cited in Zyngier,
Fialho, and Parado Rios-ed. 2007 p.195). Furthermore, quoting from Carter
(1993: p. 142), they argued that the process of LitAw development hold that the
process involve:
a-
Properties
of language, i.e., its creativity and playfulness and its double meanings;
b-
Embedding
language within culture;
c-
Forms of the language we use;
e-
Close
relationship between language and ideology
(Zyngier,
Fialho, and Parado Rios-ed. 2007 p. 195).
Making a step
further, they argued that LitAw involves five elements:
1- Exposure:
This occurs with direct contact of a reader with a text. The more the learners
read the more practice they obtain. But, exposure depends on four factors:
- Setting: This refers
the situation which in the act of reading is taking place,
- Duration: This
accounts for time-length of exposure,
- Intensity: This refers
to the depths of reading, including skimming scanning, extensive reading and
intensive reading (quoted from Grellet 1984, 1990 p.4, Grwer and Pearson 1986,
Hoey 1991), and
- Type: This indicates
the manner the students respond to how reading is done (silently, individually,
in a group, etc)
(Zyngier,
Fialho, and Parado Rios-ed. 2007 p. 196)
2- Cross-linking:
This includes:
- Projection which answers
for the reader's anticipation (quoted from Wilding, 1982 p. 271; Sinclair 1991
a)
- Inference which helps the
reader to arrive at a general picture from clues in a text.
- Intentionality: which assumes
that the readers are able to construct meaning, based on what they think the
author intended
(Zyngier,
Fialho, and Parado Rios-ed. 2007 p. 195).
3- Reference
Build-up: This indicates a fact that the more connections the readers can make
the more complex their understanding of a text. And this depends on integration
and sequentiality which varies:
-according to difference in
background: the readers' repertoires are always unique, as people differ in
the experience they undergo and absorb,
- according to the integration
and sequentiality: This can be expressed by the learner need to build literary
repertoire which is progressive and sequential and justified in the
reader's response to new texts.
4- Adjustment:
Here, depending on their repertoire, the learners can reject, accept, or revise
the information they gain from the text, which eventually means that the
process involves matching what is expected of the text to a body of
knowledge and assimilating the new.
5- Productivity:
This refers to a strong component of LitAw that encourages personal expression
and the use of imagination, which suggests participation in verbal art to help
the students choose, describe, identify, and discuss stylistic patterns (ibid
pp. 196-7-8).
Among the discussions of such a
cognitive issue of the learners' mode and tendency to read literature, an
important additional participation came from David Ian Hanauer in his Attention-directed
Literary Education: An Empirical Investigation (ed. 2007). Hanauer
suggested an Empirical approach to the literature education process based on
facts collected orderly from classroom (or home) activities. And this approach
value, in Hanauer's (2007: pp. 169-170) exact words, "... it provides
information from the world of practice and response." and "... derives
from an interdisciplinary, empirical method."
In 1999, Hanauer developed a model
of literary education, which came as a combination of understanding from
adjoining fields of cognitive psychology, applied linguistics, and literary
education (quoted from Hanauer 1999- cited in Hanauer 2007: p. 170). This, in
fact, was an attempt to define the core role for the system of attention in
developing literary knowledge by making use of preliminary
thoughts developed in relation to 'literary awareness' made by
Zyngier 1994 a, 1994 b).
Hanauer's (1999) model of literary
knowledge growth was based on three basic principles:
1- Literary
knowledge development: This defines development in terms of interpretive ability,
which also implies an increasing ability to respond and interpret literary
texts, and eventually to enhance ability to choose, concentrate on, and make
use of information exist in a literary text in order to reach a contextually
relevant interpretation (Hanauer 1999; 2007: p. 171).
2- Cognitive
concepts of enhanced ability: This could be identified pursuant to
development of two particular processes:
-Analysis, and
- Control (quoted from
Bialstok 1999, 1994).
Analysis
means the gradual change in the type of information stored in long-term memory,
while control indicates a move in the ability to concentrate decidedly
on certain information. In this sense, it implies the process of exploiting
attention in certain representations of knowledge and the ability to shift from
one presentation to another (Hanauer 2007: p. 171).
3- Understanding
the system of attention: This system, as described within
the cognitive paradigms, directs the quality and quantity of information coming
to the learners' minds by deciding the type of information to deal with from
the range of information that an individual is exposed to. For attention
Hanauer quoted from Tomlin and Villa (1994), arguing that attention is divided
into three interrelated functions:
a- Alertness, which is a
'general readiness to deal with incoming stimuli';
b- Orientation, which refers
to the directing and attentional resources to a certain kind of stimuli;
c- Detection, which is
defined as 'the cognitive registration of sensory stimuli.' (Hanauer 2007: p.
171).
Here below, in (Figure 2) one can
see that Hanauer model basically shows a circular movement which focus on the
function of systematic instruction of plain information in increasing the
amount of information that is seen by the literary student, which in its
turn enhances the learner's awareness of specific types of information
found in a literary text.
Figure No.2: Hanauer model of literary knowledge development (2007)
In brief, Hanauer's model suggests
that awareness and the system of attention have major functions in the literary
knowledge development, i.e., the starting point is an awareness of
information within the literary text (Hanauer 2007: p. 173).
Finally, in terms of EFLT/L, as the
reading of literary works is basically a sort of communication between the
learners and the writers of different types of literature, and this, originally,
is a kind of communicative language ability. It is worth mentioning that the
communicative language ability is supposed to be a combination of adjacent
components (Hedge 2003: p.46), (linguistic competence, pragmatic
competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, and fluency
in the three skills of language speaking, writing, and reading),
and for sure not to forget Chomsky's grammatical competence'. Hence, the
use of the term 'literary competence' (in parallel with the
afore-said competences) would sound, for the aims of this study, more
appropriate than the other two terms, 'literary education' and 'literary
awareness'.
9-
Methodology
9-1 Questionnaire Design:
In
order to identify the students’ assumed literary-competence standard and
development, a questionnaire form (see appendix II) was designed to include
twenty statement-items (for better understanding from the learners, the
statement-items were given in three versions: English, Kurdish, and
Arabic). Ten of the said-items included positive attitudes towards studying
and reading English novels, and the other ten items included negative attitudes
towards reading or studying English novels and stories. The questionnaire's
version were exposed to a jury of experts (see their names in appendix I) in
methods of teaching EFL to examine its adequacy and convenience. Examined so, the
questionnaire statement-items were given the following scales: 1- always;
2- often; 3- sometimes; 4- rarely; 5- never, with marks distributed as
follows:
*
The positive-attitude-statement-items were given successive scores from 5 to 0)
*
Overturning the scores distribution, the negative-attitude-statement-items
scores (from 0 to 5).
9-2 Study
Population: Sample and
Participants:
9-2-1 Population
Students of departments of English at 3 universities in Duhok
Governorate area were chosen as a population of the study.
9-2-2 Study-sample Participants Selection:
The research-sample participants were selected from the population
above-mentioned in (9-2-1) according to a systematic approach. Depending on the
student-name lists, and as the average number of the students names in the
lists was around 30-35, the student of every fifth name in the list was
selected as a participant in the research-sample. Thus, six participants from
each stage of study were chosen to collect 24 participant from each department
of English, and thus, a total number of 96 participants were gathered (from 4 departments/
4 colleges/ 3 universities) to be the community of the study.
9-2-3 Questionnaire: Conduct and Results
Distributing the 96 questionnaire
forms and getting them back from the research-sample participants, the results
collected from the questionnaire forms were classified in tables according to
the following codes:
Universities: Uni.
Nawroz (NzU; Uni. Zakho (UoZ); Uni. Duhok UoD
Colleges: College
of Languages (CoL); College of Arts (CoA); College of Basic Education (CoBE)
Departments: Department
of English (DoE)
Stages: freshmen
(1); sophomores (2); juniors (3); seniors (4)
Genders: Male
(1) Female (2)
9-
2- 4 Data Analysis and Discussion
Examining the provability
of the hypotheses set in section (6) of this study,
the data collected from the questionnaire feed-back indicated the following:
Firstly: For
the first hypothesis which states that “The EFL learners, joining a
college to study English language have very poor standard of an assumed
'literary competence'”, in order identifying the EFL
learners' 'literary competence' standard in Duhok Governorate Area's
universities in general, the data was statistically dealt with according
to the Socialistic Program Statistics Suitcase (SPSS). The findings in Table
No.3 below were reached:
Table
No.3: Research-sample distribution according to the 'literary
competence' standard at the whole study population
Indicator
|
Literary competence standard degree
|
||
Weak
Mark:40 and
less
|
Fair
Mark: 41-58
|
High
Mark: 59 and
up
|
|
No.
|
13
|
71
|
12
|
Percentage
|
13.5%
|
74%
|
12.5%
|
Findings in Table
No.1 indicated that the learners’ 'literary competence'
standard ranges, in marks, between 24% and 68%, with statistic mean
of (49.56) and standard deviation of (8.58). Depending on the
indicator of (mean-deviation and mean+deviation),
the researcher could classify the research-sample members in 3 groups,
according to their degree of 'literary competence' standard:
- Weak (13 out of 96
participants): This group got scores of (40% and less), in a percentage of
(13.0%).
- Fair (71 out of 96
participants): This group got scores of (41-58%), in percentage of (74%)
- High (12 out of 96
participants): This group got scores of (59% and above), in a percentage of (12.5%).
Taking the
scores of the 3 groups in account, although they moderately range between 40%
and 59%, the research-sample’s community in general could still be found as
poorly standardized in respect of ‘literary competence.
Hence, the
first hypothesis was proved and accepted.
Secondly: For hypotheses 2
and 4 which successively denote that ‘No significant differences can be
found the ‘literary competence’ standard between the EFL learners at 3
universities in Duhok Governorate area” and
“The EFL learners
at a tertiary level can develop and improve their 'literary competence'
throughout the 4-year-college-study”
Table
No.4: Differences in 'literary competence' standard by
university
Variance
source
|
Total of
squares
|
Freedom
degree
|
Mean of
squares
|
F value
|
Significant
degree
|
Among the
groups
|
220.37
|
2
|
110.18
|
1.541
|
No
Significance
|
Inside the
groups
|
6767.25
|
93
|
72.76
|
||
Total
|
6978.62
|
95
|
Using the
ONEWAY as a statistic means, Table No.4, the 'literary
competence' standard, by university (hyp.1), detected no significant differences
in the ‘literary competence’ standard among the EFL learners at NzU, UoD, and
UoZ.
Meanwhile, it
detected no significant degree of development in the ‘literary competence’
standard inside each group (hyp.4)
Hence, up to
the findings of Table No.4 hyp.2 is proved and accepted, while for hyp.4
it is nullified and rejected.
Thirdly: For hypothesis 3 which
states that “No significant differences can be found in the ‘literary
competence’ standard among the EFL learners at 4 colleges of 3 universities in
Duhok Governorate area” See Table No. 5 below:
Table
No.5: The differences in 'literary competence' standard by
college
Variance
source
|
Total of
squares
|
Freedom
degree
|
Mean of
squares
|
F value
|
Significant
degree
|
Among the
groups
|
30.79
|
2
|
15.39
|
0.206
|
No
Significance
|
Inside the
groups
|
6956.83
|
93
|
74.80
|
||
Total
|
8987.62
|
95
|
Once again the
ONEWAY method as a statistic means, no significant differences detected among
the EFL learners’ ‘literary competence’, whether among colleges
group in different universities (NoZ, UoD, UoZ) or between colleges group of
the same university (UoD). Meanwhile, the findings once more detected no
development happened in the ‘literary competence’ inside the groups due to
4-college-stages.
Hence, hyp 3
was proved and accepted, while hyp 4 was once more nullified and rejected.
Fourthly: For Hypothesis 4
which denotes that “The EFL learners at a tertiary level can develop and
improve their 'literary competence' throughout the 4-year-college-study”
See the table
below.
Table
No.6: Development in 'literary competence' standard by study-stage
Variance
source
|
Total of
squares
|
Freedom
degree
|
Mean of
squares
|
F value
|
Significant
degree
|
Among the
groups
|
73.21
|
3
|
24.40
|
0,325
|
No
Significance
|
Inside the
groups
|
6914.41
|
92
|
75.15
|
||
Total
|
8987.62
|
95
|
Again the
ONEWAY method as a statistic means was used, and it detected an absence of
significant in 'literary competence' standard during the passing
through 4-study-stage.
Hence, hyp 4
was nullified and rejected as far as it concerned the aims of this study.
Fifthly: For hypothesis 5 which
denotes that “The EFL male-learners can develop better standard of 'literary
competence' than that of EFL female-learners.”
See the table
below:
Table
No.7: The significant differences in the 'literary competence'
standard according to gender
Variable
|
Gender
|
No.
|
Mathematical
mean
|
Standard
deviation
|
T-value
|
Significance
degree
|
Literary
competence
|
Male
|
48
|
48.31
|
9.57
|
1.436
|
No
significance
|
Female
|
48
|
50.81
|
7.33
|
T-test for 2
independent samples method was used (Table No.7) to analyze the
results. The statistic findings detected that the T-value is (1.437) with
significance degree of (0.05), and with Freedom degree of (94), which
eventually means no significant differences in 'literary competence' standard
between the two groups of male and female-learners could be found.
Hence, hyp. 5 was nullified and rejected.
Sixthly:
For hypothesis 6 which denotes that “In Duhok Governorate
area universities, the tertiary level EFL learners at any state-university can
develop better standard of 'literary competence' than that of their peers in
the private-sector-universities, because the formers join the university with a
total of marks higher than that of the latters, pursuant to the
university-application-regulations in Kurdistan Region-Iraq.” Since the
data in Tables No. 4 and 5 indicated that no significant
differences could be found in ‘literary competence’ standard among the EFL
learners at the 3 universities, this implicitly detected that no significant
differences could be found between the state universities and the private-sector
universities in this respect.
Hence,
hyp.6 was nullified and rejected as far as it concerned the aims of this study.
10- Conclusions
and Recommendations
10- Conclusions
In the light of
the data analysis in (section 9) above, the following conclusion have been
arrived at:
1-
Students who
join the tertiary level of education, in particular those who join a department
of English come to college with poor standard of ‘literary competence’.
2-
Unless they
come to college with good pre-command of their native language literature, the
EFL learner at the tertiary level of education can hardly develop a fair
‘literary competence’ during the 4-year-college-study of English language, and
it can also implicitly concluded that the development of any ‘literary competence’
has better starts from the pre-school level.
3-
Although they
go there under the privilege of getting high marks in the summative examination,
students who join the state-university could hardly develop a better ‘literary
competence’ standard than that of those who join a private-sector
university under the restriction of getting low marks in the summative
examination.
4-
Although the
impression that circumstances in any patriarch community usually suggest that
male-learners have the chance to develop a better ‘literary competence’
standard than that of a female-learners, the research-sample male-learners part
of this study could hardly prove the ability to do so.
5-
Since the individual’s ‘literary taste and aesthetic
mood’ is critically said to be a
comprehensive one, and although studying the novel was taken as a model for the
development of an assumed ‘literary competence’, the findings of
this study can be generalized, even if with restrictions, to include poetry and
drama study.
10-
2 Recommendations
In the light of the data analysis and
conclusions, the following recommendation can be presented:
1-
It is very
necessary that the system of both, the first level and second level of
education, should pay greater attention to this very important fact that
building a communicatively-healthy individual does not mean only lingering at
the prescriptive knowledge, but should also expanding the scope of the
learners’ knowledge to include building up the leaners’ aesthetic taste
through, for instance, arranging literary competitions and founding literary
societies within every school for poetry, story, and drama, and consequently
2-
A sort of
communication should be made between the school-learners of all levels (basic,
secondary, tertiary) and the cultural, artistic, and literary societies in the
area.
References
- Brown, H. Doglas (1987) Principles of Language Learning and
Teaching. USA
- Brumfit, C. J. & Carter R. A. (2000) Literature and Language
Teaching. Oxford University Press Hong Kong
- Chambers, Ellie & Marshal, Gregory (2006) Teaching &
Learning English Literature. Sage Publication, London
- Duff, Alan and Maley, Alan (2003) Literature. Oxford
University Press. Oxford New York China
- Gill, Richard (2006) Mastering English Literature. Plagrave.
Macmillan. Great Britain
- Hedge, Tricia (2003) Teaching and Learning in the Language
Classroom. Oxford University Press Oxford New York.
- Kumaravadivelu, B (2012) Language Teacher Education for Global Society.
Routledge. New York & London
- Nizi, Nozar & Gautam, Rama (2007) How to Study Literature.
Rahnama Press. Tehran
- Short, Mick (1969) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays, and
Prose. Longman. London and New York
- Swnior, Rose M. (2006) The Experience of Language Teaching.
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge New York.
- Lazar, Gillian (2013) Literature and Language Teaching.
Cambridge University Press. University Printing House.
- Watson, Greg and Zyngier, Sonia (2007) Literature and Stylistics
for Lamguage Learners. Palgrave Macmillan. Great Britain
- Widdowson, H. D. (2003) Defining Issues in English Language
Teaching. Oxford University Press. UK
Appendix I
Names of the jury who examined the questionnaire statements’ adequacy:
1-
Dr. Hussein Ali Gargari (Prof.)/ College of Languages/ Nawroz University
2-
Dr. Chachaan Jum'ah Mohammed (Assist Prof.)/Department of Psychological
& Educational Sciences /Faculty of Basic education/University of Duhok
3-
Dr. Sami Abdul-Aziz Al-Ma'mouri (Prof.)/Department of English/College of
Basic Education/ University of Diyala.
Appendix
II
Dear Student'
The researcher is carrying out a research "Investigating
the Literary-competence-development of the Learners of English as a Foreign
Language: The Novel as a Model."
I have the pleasure to benefit from your
frank and clear answers to the following questionnaire items.
Thank you for being helpful.
Researcher
Ahmed Kh. Sha'lan
Nawroz University
قوتابيىَ هيَذا ... قوتابيا هيَذا:
-
ظةكولةرى ل بةرة رابيت ب ئةنجامدانا ظةكولينةكا مةيدانى يا راوةرطرتن ل دور ثيَشظةضوونا
مةلةكا ئةدةبى ل دةف قوتابييَن ثشكا زمانىَ ئينكليزى لدةمىَ قوناغيَن
خواندناوان.
و من ثىَ خوشة مفايىَ ذ بةرسظيَن وة ييَن هيَذا ببينم
ب ريَيا وىَ نيشانا هوين دداننة بةرامبةر وىَ بةرسظا هوين دبينن يا طونجاى... و
سوثاس بؤ هاريكاريا هةوة
عزيزتي الطالبة،
عزيزي الطالب:
يروم الباحث إجراء بحث
ميداني "استطلاع تطور االقابلية الأدبية لدارسي الإنكليزية لغة أجنبية في
الجامعة: إتخاذ دراسة الرواية نموذجا".
يسعدني أن أفيد من
أجوبتكم الصريحة و الواضحة التي تضعونها بتأشيرات إزاء الخيارات التي توضحها
العبارات الموجودة في الجدول في أدناه.
شكرا على تعاونكم.
الباحث
أحمد خالص شعلان
جامعة نوروز
|
مـلـخـَّص الـبـحـث
عنوان البحث: "إستقصاء تطور الأداء الأدبي لمتعلمي الإنكليزية
لغة أجنبية في المرحلة الجامعية: دراسة الرواية نموذجاً"
ورقة البحث هذه كانت مكرَّسةً لإستقصاء
"الأداء الأدبي literary
competence "
لمتعلمي الإنكليزية لغة أجنبية في اقسام اللغة الإنكليزية في كليات 3 جامعات في
منطقة محافظة دهوك للعام الدراسي 2014-2015 .
بعد مدخل لتسويغ القيام بهذه الدراسة، و
تحديد المشكلة بإتخاذ دراسة الرواية نموذجا للبحث، و وضع أهدافٍ للبحث، و تحديد
مجاله، و صياغة الفرضيات المناسبة، و إجراء مسح للأدب البحثي المكتوب في هذا
المجال و له علاقة بالدارسة، ,
إكساء المصطحات المتداولة في الدراسة
بالتعريفات التي تحتاجها الدراسة، قام الباحث كخطوة أخيرة لهذه المرحلة بتصميم "نموذج
إستبيان "questionnaire form
كأداة لجمع المعلومات حول المشكلة المطروحة في البحث.
جرى إختيار متعلمي الإنكليزية لغة إجنبية في
أربعة أقسام للغة الإنكليزية في كليات تابعة لثلاث جامعات موجودة في منطقة محافظة
دهوك.
بعد توزيع أوراق نموذج الإستقصاء على عينة
البحث المختارة من مجتمع البحث المذكور في أعلاه، و إسترداد أوراق النموذج بالتغذية
الراجعة المطلوب، و تحليل البيانات التي جمعت بأوراق الإستقصاء و معالجتها إحصائيا
توصل الباحث الى نتائج ساعدت على صياغة إستنتاجات مفيدة و ضرورية عن مستوى
"الأداء الأدبي" و تطوره لدى متعلمي الإنكليزية لغة أجنبية، و إمكانية
تعميم الإستنتاجات لتشمل تدريس الأدب بكل أنواعه (رواية، قصة، شعر، مسرح) . . . و
ساعدت الإستنتاجات بدورها على صياغة مقترحات مهمة لتحسين و تطوير الأداء الأدبي
عند متعلمي اللغة الإنكليزية لغة أجنبية للمراحل كافة: الإبتدائية و الثانوية و
الجامعية.
المصطلحات الرئيسة المستعملة في البحث: الوعي
الأدبي literary awareness
، الأداء الأدبي literary
competence،
المعرفة الأدبية literary
knowledge.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
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