Teaching literature in English language teaching programmes: An electic approach

The aim of this study is to search for the three models of teaching literature in language classrooms, which are cultural model, linguistic model and personal growth model in literature courses in the English Language Teaching Programmes at Gazi University. It also aims at finding whether the literature courses in the department include teaching how to teach literary texts in language classrooms and at offering an eclectic approach. Students and instructors attending Gazi University English Language Teaching Programme were the subjects of the study. The data collection devices were a questionnaire applied to 125 students and an interview with 7 instructors lecturing literature courses in the department. The first chapter presents a general background to the study, its aims, scope and limitations. The second chapter provides the definition of literature, the reasons why literary texts are taught in language classrooms, the approaches or models of teaching literature. The third chapter presents the methodology of the study including data analysis and evaluation of the questionnaire and the interview. The last chapter provides summary of the study, suggestions, implications and conclusion. The analysis of the data collected has pointed out that cultural model is the most popular model in literature courses, and personal growth model being the second most popular one. However, the analysis has shown that linguistic model is not a model that the instructors focus on during literature courses. Another result of the analysis is that how to teach literary texts in future language classrooms is not included in the curriculum. m