INCORPORATING A READING STRATEGY IN LITERATURE INTENSIVE COURSE WITH A VIEW TO INCREASING THE LEARNERS’ COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION OF LITERARY MATERIAL The Case of Second Year Students at the English Department- Ouargla University

Abstract

This work attempts to bridge the gap between literature teaching methods and classroom instruction. This stresses the matter how literature methods and theories should be integrated in the field of foreign language teaching. To raise teachers’ awareness of literature characteristics, aspects such as literary devices, rhetoric and literary figurative language are highly considered in planning literature lessons, because they are key concepts to help learners process and comprehend literary material appropriately. Moreover teaching models which provide pedagogic framework for the discipline have been developed to adapt literary theories to classroom practice. Also, intensive reading sessions are introduced to foster learners’ comprehension and interpretation of literary material. In order to achieve successful literary reading, SQ3R reading strategy is integrated in intensive literature lessons. The rationale behind the idea in reading artistic material is that what learners do before and after reading a text, like skimming, annotating, scanning, extending meanings to real life, and personal responses, are as important as the task of reading itself. In order to affirm this hypothesis, an experiment is conducted. It explores the effectiveness of SQ3R- based intensive reading which divides reading into three stages to attain full comprehension and interpretation of texts in general and literary texts in particular. These stages are pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading. Each stage has a set of activities leading learners to access smoothly to the following stage. The experiment is designed in two phases carried out with second year university students at the University of Ouargla. In the first phase, classical courses are presented followed by atest. After that, SQ3R-based sessions are introduced followed by a post-test. If improvement in learners’ scores is noticed, it may be due then to the new method: SQ3R-reading strategy. The experiment is repeated in a second phase to confirm the reliability and validity of the method. To test the hypothesis, T-test and Fisher & Yates’s statistical values and calculations have been used. The significant improvement noticed in the subjects’ (testees) rate of comprehension and interpretation of literary text after they have taken the treatment based on SQ3R reading strategy, during experimental courses has confirmed the hypothesis proposed, “If literature is taught through strategic intensive reading, it may foster the students’ comprehension and interpretation of literary text” and therefore proves the effectiveness of SQ3R-based teaching strategy imparted to intensive reading literature sessions that may be added to reinforce literature course.