A Learner-centered approach to the teaching of literature in ELT departments

Ill ABSTRACT The subject which is to be presented in this thesis, is the observations, classroom techniques and the data gathered as a result of the research which was conducted during 1996-1997 academic year in ELT Department of Education Faculty at Trakya University. The aim of the research was to improve students' literary text reading and analyzing abilities with the help of literary theories. In our country, in private and Anatolian High Schools, teachers use literary texts in reading courses. In these courses, most of the times, the teachers present the students some historical and authobiographical background knowledge, instead of teaching them how to comprehend and respond a text. In the very depths of this kind of literary text teaching methods there lies the problem of not teaching the student-teachers different approaches and methods and thus, not letting them gain their own interpretative skills during university education. As a result, the university- level students lack reading, analyzing and interpreting skills. With the same problem, we, as researchers and lecturers, faced with at Trakya University. After determining some specific problems of our students, we held a research. In order to settle our study on firm basis, among the 20th. Century theories, we selected three literary theories: phenomenology, structuralism and reader's response. The selection of these was done according to the "reading process" which was done established as a result of writer-text-reader relationship presented in Chapter. 1. Under the light of these theories, some classroom techniques were applied to 25 third year ELT students and the data was evaluated qualitatively.