Which classroom strategy is more motivational to teaching literature in EFL classes? Literary based- texts or new technologies- based materials

Abstract

Indubitably, the main objective of teaching English literature through literary texts is to help EFL students to appreciate the target literature and culture; to develop learners’ reading skills and sub-skills such as skimming and scanning; as well as to enlarge learners’ vocabulary to help them communicate fluently in the target language. To achieve these aims, most EFL teachers of literature have been, for long, focusing on the use of literary texts as the main teaching tool for they always believed that an EFL class should focus on mastering linguistic elements only. However, recent trend in EFL teaching indicates the necessity of integrating new technologies and certain ICT’s within literature classes because of its rich potential to provide an authentic model of language use. Among these tools, one should note the audio short stories, videos and computers which seem to be the most suitable teaching and learning instruments due to their potential to create a sense of diversity in literature classrooms; and thus, to enhance learners’ motivation to improve their interest, knowledge and awareness of both English language and literature. All in all, the purpose of our comparative study is to investigate about which of the two aforestated strategies to teaching English literature is more motivational to EFL students, also to familiarize EFL instructors of literature with the effectiveness of adopting new technologies- based classrooms that the current technological era urges to use. For this reason, data are collected by means of two research tools, namely the questionnaire and the classroom observation. Ultimately, the analyses of the research findings confirmed the main assumption that the present study has revolved around. Based on the results obtained, pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research are suggested.