Investigating the Literary Competence Development of the Tertiary Level’s EFL Learners: The Novel as a Model

Authors

  • Ahmed Kh. Shalan College of Languages, Department of English, Nawroz University, Duhok, Kurdisatn Region - Iraq

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25007/ajnu.v6n3a82

Keywords:

Literary awareness, literary competence, literary knowledge

Abstract

This research paper is 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 for 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, after selecting the research-sample, distributing the questionnaire forms, collecting back the forms with feedback, analyzing the collected data, the researcher finally got important findings about the reality and the development of the EFL learners’ ‘literary competence’ at the tertiary level, and among them are the following:

  • EFL tertiary level students have got a very poor literary competence,
  • EFL tertiary level students’ literary competence should have been acquired during the pre-college learning levels through reading of the mother-tongue’s literature, and then could be developed through reading the EFL literature,
  • EFL tertiary level’s students could hardly improve their literary competence standard during the EFL 4-year-college English literature reading, and

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 provided the possibility to generalize the arrived at conclusions to include the teaching of poetry, short story, and drama; and consequently, the conclusions led to put forward necessary recommendations on how to improve the ‘literary competence’, and the ‘aesthetic taste and mood’ of the EFL learners in general.

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References

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Widdowson, H. D. (2003) Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford Oxford University Press

Published

2017-08-23

How to Cite

Shalan, A. K. (2017). Investigating the Literary Competence Development of the Tertiary Level’s EFL Learners: The Novel as a Model. Academic Journal of Nawroz University, 6(3), 71–82. https://doi.org/10.25007/ajnu.v6n3a82

Issue

Section

Articles