Teaching approaches employed by secondary school teachers in teaching literature component in English

Abstract

The literature component is one of the contents included in the new English language curriculum for all secondary schools in Malaysia. The curriculum goals have stated clearly that the literature component should engage students in reading for enjoyment and self-development. However, it is actually very rare to see that these aspirations been implemented during the teaching of literature component in the real English language classroom setting. Therefore, this study aims to identify the teaching approaches that English language teachers use when teaching literature in class, the reasons behind the selection of approaches being used and also the differences between the teaching approaches used by teachers teaching in rural and urban secondary schools. The data for this study was collected via questionnaire and the respondents of this study were 149 English language teachers who have been teaching English language subject in secondary schools. In this study, it is found that teacher-centered approach is used more than student-centered approach when teaching literature component. Furthermore, teacher-centered approach is employed the most in rural secondary schools while urban secondary teachers are more prone to use student-centered approach when they teach literature to their students. The teaching approaches employed in class are greatly determined by their students’ level of proficiency in the language. The reason was mainly because the students did not have the competency in language, so it is hard to approach literature through student-centered way.