Motivating Literature Assessment in an EFL Setting
Phuong thi Anh LE, Vietnam
Phuong thi Anh LE has been a TESOL teacher and teacher trainer for over 34 years in Vietnam. As a researcher, she has presented and published extensively on various issues in TESOL and teacher education. Her major research interests include syllabus design, assessment, teacher development, intercultural communication and pragmatics. She has also participated in various national teacher education projects and works as an MA thesis supervisor. She earned a Master of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University (Australia) in 2000 and a Doctor of Education at La Trobe University (Australia) in 2008. She was a Fulbright scholar in USA in 2009 and she joined the Asia Teacher-Writers group in 2010. She has integrated creative writing into her teaching in various courses for the last few years.
E-mail: leaphuong2003@yahoo.com
Menu
Background
Introduction
Case study
Assessment
Materials choice and course delivery
Results and discussion
Student perceptions
Discussion
Conclusions and recommendations
References
The values of teaching literature to EFL/ESL students have been widely discussed (e.g. Baurain, 2000, Cope, 1998; Hall, 2003; Khatib, Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011; Moon, 2010; Paran, 2008). However, EFL students often find this subject daunting (Baurain, 2000) and teachers find it hard to motivate the students to learn and to give them adequate assessment (Nguyen, 2010). Assessment in particular seems to pose near-impossible challenges
This article reports a case study involving assessment given to a class of 50 EFL college students in a short literature course in Vietnam. With an assessment which promotes students' choice and independence of mind (QUAD, 2000 cited in Chambers & Gregory, 2006), students were asked to work both individually and in teams throughout the course to show their literary understanding via various tasks, including independent reading (Popp, 2005), class discussions, portfolios, story-telling, dramatization (Bernal, 2007; Maley & Duff, 2005; Popp, 2005) and creative writing (e.g. Knoeller, 2003; Wong 2004), apart from a short written test. Personal observations and questionnaire results showed that the students enjoyed the course and their assessment was favorably received by the students who demonstrated increased self-esteem, autonomy and creativity, in addition to enhanced language and critical thinking skills. Suggestions were provided for conducting similar assessments in other contexts.
The teaching of literature to EFL/ESL students has been extensively promoted (e.g. Baurain, 2000, Cope, 1998; Hall, 2003; Moon, 2010; Paran, 2008; Tran 2003) because literature is considered as a valuable type of teaching material not only for its authenticity, but also for the motivation, cultural and linguistic knowledge, as well as other social and academic skills it provides to the learner (Khatib, Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011). However, students may find literature a daunting subject due to its challenges regarding language use, cultural and literary implications (Baurain, 2000; Khatib, Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011). This problem is often witnessed in classes in Vietnam where canonical authors and their works are often taught in literature courses to students who major in English. In these courses, assessment is also a concern, as the tests can result in students' rote learning or plagiarism (Nguyen, 2010). To address this issue, a case study was conducted to investigate these problems.
When I was asked to teach an American literature course to a class of 50 final-year Vietnamese college students majoring in English, I decided to change the assessment so that issues like rote learning and plagiarism would not pose a problem. For these aims, I designed and delivered the course in such a way that it could instil in the students the love for literature, and also maximize their language and thinking skills. During 15 weeks with a weekly lesson of 2.5 hours, the course was structured to help students know the links between language, culture and literature, to enhance their analytical and critical thinking skills and to increase their team-work skills.
At the beginning of the course, I discussed with the students the course outline, with its organization, delivery, materials, and assessment. Especially, students were told in detail about how they would be assessed throughout the course, specifically as follows.
Diverse forms of assessment aimed to increase individual choice and independence of mind (QUAD, 2000, cited in Chambers and Gregory, 2006) were used with class participation, extensive reading, journal writing, story-telling, dramatization and creative writing, in addition to a written test.
Participation
During the course, the students were encouraged to participate in sharing ideas and answering questions raised by the teacher about the texts in class. This participation was used as an assessment criterion so that it could increase students' involvement in their lessons and their willingness to voice opinions about what they learnt. This assessment was also aimed to turn the class into a learner-based environment where students took an active role and the teacher acted more as a facilitator in the learning process.
Extensive reading
To nurture reading habits among the students and improve their cultural understanding and thinking skills (Rashid, Vethamani & Rahman, 2010), in addition to enriching their English proficiency (Knoeller, 2003), the students were encouraged to read short stories written by various authors often in the form of graded readers' series from 1,000 to 5,000 words found in the college library. Evidence of their reading was recorded in the form of summaries of approximately 100 to 150 words long, followed by another 100 words about their perceptions on certain aspects of the stories, like setting, plot, characters and writing style.
Journal writing
Journal writing has been widely promoted in teaching literature (Khatib, Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011) as it can help students express personal responses in writing to the literary texts or to relate to their own experience (Knoeller, 2003). In our context, before class, students were asked to write their answers to a set of questions about a poem or a story they were going to discuss in class. This was one way to make students more prepared for their lessons and improve their confidence in expressing their ideas in class. After class, these students were expected to write about 100 words to relate the poem or the story they had just studied to their own experience.
Creative writing
Creative writing can provide an ideal vehicle for responding to literature in personally meaningful ways and it could reflect students' inner life creatively (Knoeller, 2003). In this course, the students were encouraged to write their own poems so that they could develop and demonstrate their thinking and imagination. In order to assist them in this process, the teacher gave them some practice with poems in simple English with relevant content, such as those from Life in Words and Words in Life and Asian Poems for Young Readers (edited by Maley & Mukundan, 2009). The poems made by the students were often edited by the teacher before they were shared with the class (with the authors' permission) and small prizes in the form of pens or books were awarded to the authors.
Together with students' extensive reading and journal writing, their creative writing formed individual portfolios which were read every two weeks, with feedback and marks given each time. In this way, the teacher could follow the students' progress not only in their literary understanding but also their writing and reading skills.
Story telling
Toward the end of the course when all the stories to be learnt had been explored, the students worked in teams to tell or dramatize stories they had chosen. Those students who chose to do storytelling worked in pairs for one week on a story of their choice before they told their stories to the class within 10 minutes. The techniques in making their stories more lively, such as role-playing (Khatib, Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011), the use of voice, gestures, props, pictures, music and video slips were also emphasized in their delivery of the story. To assist the students in their performance, the teacher held one session on storytelling techniques with lots of video illustrations for the students to understand what was expected of them more clearly.
Dramatization
Dramatization is beneficial to the language class as it integrates verbal and non-verbal aspects of communication and develops students' motivation by fostering their self-awareness, self-esteem and confidence (Maley & Duff, 2005). This activity can also enable the students to analyze the texts more deeply and solve problems about scripting, casting, setting, and dialogue, thus increasing their higher levels of thinking (Smith, 1993).
As mentioned above, the students could choose to dramatize the stories as part of their assessment. In groups, they were expected to give a performance of 15-20 minutes on one story they had learnt or read. Students worked for two weeks on selecting scenes, writing scripts and preparing their own props. During the rehearsal, the teacher was available to give them guidance on various aspects of their performance. It was made clear that students' teamwork was important in all assessed activities and the teacher focused more on literary appreciation, rather than assessment.
Written test
The written test was an assessment required by the college. It was designed and conducted by the teacher. In this test, the students were asked to analyze a poem which was new to them and they had to write about their favorite character in a story they had read and to explain in what ways this character impressed them.
While class participation, extensive reading, journal writing and creative writing were assessed throughout the course, storytelling or dramatization and the written test were conducted in the end of the course. As this was on-going assessment, it was intertwined with the learning and teaching process.
The part below illustrates how this assessment was supported by the materials choice and the course delivery.
As classical literature could be too challenging for students (Cope, 1998), the content of the course was narrowed down to American 20th century literature, with selected authors and their works so that the course could be more manageable to both the teacher and the students. Also, only short stories and poems relevant to the students' language levels, maturity and interest were chosen.
Guided by course objectives, the teaching was characterised by an integrated approach in teaching literature (Khatib, Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011) which combined the language-based approach (Maley and Duff, 1990) with the reader-response approach (Amer, 2003, cited in Khatib, Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011). In this integrated approach, various assessment tasks as mentioned in the previous part were adopted and instead of lecturing, the teacher provided many questions on each literary text which formed an essential part of the teaching. As a type of scaffolding and guidance (Liang, 2011), these questions fell into three main categories of comprehension questions designed to check the students' understanding of what they read, analytical and interpretation questions, or evaluation questions aimed to develop their higher thinking skills. Realizing that the literary language was often challenging for the students, the teacher also made use of pictures where possible to set the students thinking, to get them interested in the works they were about to read, and to enhance their desire to exploit the text further. Each lesson was featured by different teams taking turns in facilitating the discussions based on the questions the teacher raised about the readings. The teacher joined in the discussions when necessary and gave comments on the students' performance at the end of the lesson.
Participation and journal writing
As observed, students' participation which contributed towards their final marks for the course seemed to highly increase. The common problem of students' lack of response to the teacher's questions (Rashid, Vethamani & Rahman, 2010) was largely avoided thanks to the preparation that students had with the homework and the teamwork they did in class. Personal observations indicated that the students managed to do the expected tasks for journal writing which showed progress regarding the length of their writings and the depth of their thoughts and perceptions. No evidence had been found about their plagiarism and a lot of what they wrote related to their life experience.
Extensive reading
As recorded in the journals, each student read from 8 to 14 additional stories between 2000 and 4000 words each. In addition to writing a summary of 150 to 200 words for each story, students wrote about their related experience or they pointed out aspects that were considered new, interesting or incomprehensible to them. In various cases, students found out that they did not like the stories they read and justified their feelings and ideas. Sometimes, they wrote down questions about things they did not understand and the teacher provided them with the answers.
Poetry
After 15 weeks, a total of 40 poems were produced by 35/50 students. One session was devoted for the authors to share their chosen poems with the class. The class was also encouraged to join in this activity with different techniques in reciting poems like group recital with various uses of voice and gestures to make the poems livelier. This session turned out to be of great fun to the class who highly appreciated the poems and it was also a time when the students' self esteem and confidence highly enhanced.
Storytelling and dramatization
The sessions for storytelling and dramatization were another highlight of the course. Students showed their best efforts in their performance, with each group learning from their peers in improving the quality of their work. After each performance, the teacher asked their peers to give comments, followed by the teacher's feedback both on group and individual achievements.
A performance of selected poems and dramatic extracts produced by these students were made public in an English day of the EFL department when students had fun and pride in what they could do.
A questionnaire conducted at the end of the course with the class to measure the level of satisfaction with the course, especially with the materials, course delivery and assessment. For the purposes of this article, only selected data are reported here. The interest in the American course was generally high, 86% of the respondents gave very positive responses (70% considering it 'fairly interesting' or 'quite interesting' and 10% 'totally interesting', which meant 3, 4 and 5 o a 5 point Likert-scale respectively). Justifications for this evaluation were provided as follows.
Dramatization and storytelling helped us to understand the stories more easily and these activities motivated us.
I think dramatization and telling stories helped us to understand and remember the lessons longer.
Dramatization has helped us understand the contents and the meanings of stories more deeply. We loved to watch the plays that our classmates performed as they were interesting, unexpected and exciting.
We have become more confident. This way of learning made us more active in learning.
Students also found that their language skills were improved.
After this course, I realized that my writing skills greatly improved and this was thanks to the stories that I have read for this course.
I have developed my speaking skills and writing skills.
Many students (77%) really liked the materials, with 12% of them even finding it 'totally enjoyable, as remarked in the following comments.
The stories and poems were very interesting and they helped me understand and think more about life and people.
The stories had deep meanings and taught us many useful things for life.
The stories reflected our life and I could find myself in the stories.
The poems were beautiful, enjoyable and highly suitable to the students. They were easy to read, short but meaningful.
In addition, the way of teaching was well received by the students (84%), with the following justifications.
The way of teaching was very exciting and lively. I liked the questions and the pictures that the teacher used as illustrations.
This way of learning helped me understand and appreciate poems and the stories because there were many cues and details to help us.
'This teaching helped me gain lots of living experience and made me love poetry. It was easy to understand.
The analysis helped us to identify many valuable lessons from the stories and I learnt new values in life that I had never learnt or experienced before.
Sometimes I found it very hard to understand the poems but the way of teaching helped me to understand them. The teacher was very enthusiastic and she provided us with lots of useful knowledge.
When I first held the materials, I did not have any feelings or understanding, but the teacher had various interesting cues and questions to make us realize the values of these works. She has been very successful in teaching American literature'.
American English is a relatively difficult subject but the teacher's way of teaching has helped us to understand its values. The teacher's guidance motivated us to learn literature.
The students (92%) found the questions the teacher posed beneficial in helping them to understand the readings.
Questions from easy to more difficult helped to orient students for the poems. They helped me to understand the deeper meanings of the poems and improve our thinking skills.
They helped us to have many ideas, understand the stories and think more about life.
Similarly, the illustrated pictures were popular with the students who thought highly of them, with 94% of them rated them from 3 to 5 points. Their appreciation was clarified as follows.
The pictures helped to show the meanings and content of the poems and they made leave a deep impression about the poems after learning.
Motivation in the course was clearly expressed by the various comments in the survey as they found the course inspiring and they discovered new things about literature, about life and about their lives.
I felt interested in this course as I knew more about literature values, the authors as well as the characters in the stories. And through the stories, I could draw lessons for my life.
At first, I found this subject difficult because my vocabulary stock was very limited but then with the teachers' guidance, I understood it and liked it a lot.
This subject was more interesting because I learnt literature and English at the same time.
The course helped me to recognize human values and I have become more mature in my thoughts.
The course made me think more about my life as it gave me interesting feelings and experience to live better.
I understand that literature is very necessary as it teaches us how to be a person and how to behave in everyday life.
After the course, each of us loves literature more than before and I love the course. Thanks so much.
The course, with its diverse on-going assessment, was a revelation both for the teacher and the students. There were several things that the teacher learnt about the adoption of this assessment. The first factor that may have contributed to the success of the course was the support the students received from their peers and the teacher during the whole process. It was this assistance that may have weaned them off from the fear of making mistakes and given them the courage to take risks and to learn, instead of worrying about being evaluated. Thus, this help seemed to have a positive effect on classroom atmosphere, turning the class into a bonded group which learnt together (Maley & Duff, 2005).
The second factor was the diversity of the assessed tasks. Acting, dressing up, telling stories and music were considered motivating as students could enjoy the performances, instead of experiencing the solemn atmosphere of the examination room, while extensive reading was done with willingness because students were allowed to do the readings of their own choice, in their own time and at their own pace, they managed to carry out the tasks without any anxiety. The third factor that played a big part in this success was the materials and the course delivery. As repeatedly mentioned in the data, the relevant materials regarding the interest, the maturity and the language created a highly positive response from the students. Students seemed to welcome the stories and the poems that they learnt and this stimulated them to read even more. Pictures were also highly useful in the process of studying of the literary works as they helped to make the poems more vivid to them. Coupled with these pictures, the questions well built were crucial in scaffolding and developing the students' thinking skills.
Motivation seemed to soar near the end of the course, especially with sessions when students seemed to take over the class with their performances in poetry, storytelling and dramatization. In this way, activities like dramatization provided students with enjoyment in their learning (Rashid, Vethamani & Rahman, 2010) and a strong motivation for them to learn and to discover literature (DeBlase, 2005), bringing about a rich classroom experience and making literature alive for themselves (Smith, 1993). During the course, such values of literature as enriching students' lives (Cope, 1998) and teaching them emotional intelligence skills like empathy (Weber, 2006, cited by Magro, 2010) seemed to be confirmed by the students’ reactions.
As a way of improving the students' cooperation and responsibility for their work and their self-esteem (DeBlase 2005), the teamwork had helped to develop not only their negotiating skills, but also their autonomy and confidence in learning.
Learning literature could be considered an effective way for the students to improve their reading and writing skills as they were exposed to the literary language, which was generally higher than their own levels and this required them to think, to predict, to learn and to understand the content and the messages conveyed via the stories or poems. However, the students did not feel intimidated by the lessons, as our teaching and assessment promoted an open, exploratory style of learning where creativity and the imagination promoted risk-taking, as recommended by Maley and Duff (2005).
The course seemed to show that assessment for literature could be done through practical and motivating activities. Instilling in EFL students the love and the desire to learn literature in English was highly important as it released them from the misunderstanding that this subject was only for highly intellectual people. Especially, the knowledge developed from the course was not 'taught' by the teacher but it was gained by the students exploring it, thus largely transferring the responsibility for learning from teacher to learners (Maley & Duff, 2005).
A number of recommendations might be considered in implementing such assessment with intermediate EFL students. First, the assessment needs to be in accordance with the delivery of the course and it should be clearly discussed with the students at the beginning of the course so that they know in advance what is expected of them. This also means that material selection should be done with care to make sure the materials students learn are relevant to their language levels, age, gender and interests. Second, students could be guided to become independent learners who know what they need to do, both in their preparation for their lessons, in class, as well as for their independent learning. Third, even though assessment can be necessary to measure the improvement the students make during the course, it is more important to focus primarily on their learning rather than on their assessment, so that students are willing to take risks both in their learning and their assessment. As a result, this can lead to their creativity and new discoveries of different abilities that they may possess.
As the values of teaching literature to EFL to students are numerous, time and energy put into making students appreciate literature and discover it as a useful resource for their lifelong learning is worthwhile. Therefore, it is suggested that EFL teachers try different ways that suit their students to integrate literature into their teaching and to introduce the students to the world of literature.
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