Teaching Literature among Pre-Service Teachers: Challenges and Solutions

Abstract

Teacher trainees should be prepared to teach and exposed to the approaches, models, and techniques of literature teaching. Being ready can also boost their confidence to teach literature so that the lessons can be delivered smoothly. These teachers are so new to teaching that they might face difficulties when teaching English, specifically literature. There are teaching techniques, strategies and approaches that those pre-service teachers can investigate to understand better how to apply in their teaching. Additionally, their lack of exposure towards literature teaching can also affect the performance of teaching. This paper seeks to investigate pre-service teachers’ readiness to teach literature in schools and the challenges faced by them while teaching literature. It also attempts to offer suggestions to improve better literature teaching. This mixed method research study used questionnaires distributed to 22 TESL pre-service teachers from a public university in Johor. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two lecturers who have vast experiences in supervising pre-service teachers at schools. Results show that a majority of fourth year TESL students are ready to teach literature with the training and courses provided by the university. Also, among the challenges that they faced are time management and their students’ feelings on the subject. This study hopes to provide insights to training teachers on literature teaching.

The Challenges in the Teaching of English Literature

“…Noraishah et al (2015) reported that students are lacking in focus and co-operation in class during literature lesson due to teachers' weakness in giving good explanations and elaboration on the literature text. Several articles also mentioned that teachers still succumb to the old traditional ways of dull and less creative literature teaching and refuse to try new interesting techniques of teaching (Faiza & Azlina, 2020;Harwati & Mohamad Asyraf, 2019;Yahya, 2017;Ain Suraya & Norhanim, 2021).…”

“…Next, four articles stated that students who view literature in a negative way are not interested in the literature lesson itself (Ugwu, 2022;Farhanah & Hadina, 2022;Ain Suraya & Norhanim, 2021;Gatdula et al, 2022). Ugwu (2022) specifically mentioned that students undervalue the need to learn Literature in English as a school subject, which can negatively influence their attitude towards it.…”

“…Teachers can also help students to have a positive attitude towards learning English literature by explaining to them the long-term benefits that they can reap from learning it (Noraishah et al, 2015). Teachers play a huge role in motivating students to learn literature by making it real and relatable (Yahya, 2017), focusing on the cultural elements, and using a variety of attractive and enjoyable teaching strategies (Ain Suraya & Norhanim, 2021). According to Jannah et al (2022), motivating pupils may aid them in making better assumptions, performing better, resolving problems, and reducing comprehension anxiety while reading materials.…”

“…Furthermore, low-proficiency students might need to refer to dictionaries or search for the words online to identify the meanings and pronunciations, which can take a long time to finish the whole literary text. If teachers need to cater to students with limited vocabulary, it might take up quite a lot of time to finish the syllabus, which is one of the problems faced by teachers in teaching literature (Farhanah & Hadina, 2022;Ukat & Hanita, 2022;Harwati & Mohamad Asyraf, 2019;Yahya, 2017;Ain Suraya & Norhanim, 2021;Yulnetri, 2018). In general, having low proficiency in English can hinder students from critically analysing and appreciating literary texts (Dahiru, 2020).…”

“…This would make it difficult for students to fully understand and appreciate the literature. Ain Suraya and Norhanim (2021) in their study revealed that pre-service teachers considered 'having difficulty with the time allocation to teach literature' to be the most serious problem. Half of the respondents in the study by Tayib and Hassan (2020) agree that the allotted hours for teaching literature are not enough.…”