MALTEPE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING A STUDY ON LITERATURE USE OF ELT TEACHERS WITH AN ELT BACKGROUND AND THOSE WITH A LITERATURE BACKGROUND IN THEIR READING CLASSES MASTER OF ARTS THESIS AHMET ÖZKAN 101113101 Advisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Nejat TÖNGÜR Istanbul, July 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank and express my utmost gratitude to my supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Nejat TÖNGÜR. His constructive feedback contributed much to the completion process of the thesis. It would not have been possible to write this thesis without his help, support and patience. I owe my sincere thanks to Assist. Prof. Dr. Hakan DİLMAN, head of ELT Department at Maltepe University, and Assist. Prof. Dr. Ümit SÖYLEMEZ. I would like to thank Abdurrahman TANRIVERDİ, Ahmet SALMAN, Alper ÇAKMAK, Arif DEMİREL, Gökhan AÇIKEL, Muharrem KAYA, Mustafa YILMAZ, Sefa ÖZTÜRK and Yıldırım TEMEL for their contributions. Also I would like to thank all instructors who participated in this study. Finally, I owe special gratitude to my dear wife Kübra ÖZKAN and my children Enes and Elis for their understanding and love all the time. iii ÖZET Bu çalışma İngiliz Dili öğretmenlerinin kendi eğitim altyapılarına göre; Eğitim Fakültesi ya da Edebiyat Fakültesi; okuma derslerinde edebiyat kullanımı ile ilgili algılarının, inançlarının, bakış açılarının ve uygulamalarının farklılık gösterip göstermediğini saptamak için yapılmıştır. Çalışma aynı zamanda öğretmenlerin okuma derslerinde edebi metinleri ne ölçüde ve nasıl kullandıklarını, ne tür ekstra materyaller kullandıklarını, edebiyatı İngiliz Dili Eğitimine nasıl kattıklarını, eğitim altyapılarına bağlı olarak edebiyat kullanma ya da kullanmama ile ilgili esas sebepleri de ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Araştırma Türkiye’de hem devlet hem de vakıf üniversitelerinde çalışan 140 İngilizce okutmanı üzerinde gerçekleştirilmiştir. Veriler özellikle bu çalışma için tasarlanmış anket yoluyla toplandı. Elde edilen veriler SPPS (Sosyal Bilimler İstatistik Programı) yoluyla değerlendirildi. Bulgular Eğitim Fakültesi mezunu İngilizce Öğretmenlerinin aynen Edebiyat Fakültesi mezunu İngilizce Öğretmenleri gibi okuma derslerinde edebiyatın önemine ve gerekliliğine inandıklarını fakat edebiyat kullanımında kendilerini Edebiyat Fakültesi mezunları kadar yeterli görmediklerini ortaya koyuyor. Bulgular ayrıca müfredat sınırlamasının ve yetersiz ders saatlerinin de okuma derslerinde edebiyat kullanımına karşı engel oluşturduğunu ortaya koyuyor. Anahtar kelimeler: eğitim altyapısı, İngiliz dili eğitimi, edebiyat, öğretmenlerin algıları, edebiyat kullanımı, edebi metin, öğretmenlerin inançları iv ABSTRACT This study has been conducted to determine whether ELT teachers’ perceptions, beliefs, perspectives and practices about the use of literature depending on their educational background, Faculty of Education or Letters, vary during their teaching practices in reading classes. The study also aims to reveal to what extent and how often teachers use literary texts, what kind of extra materials they use, how they incorporate literature into ELT in their reading classes, and the underlying reasons as to why they use or do not use literature depending on their educational background. The study has been conducted with 140 preparatory class instructors working both at foundation and state universities in Turkey. The data have been collected through a questionnaire, specifically designed for the study. The data were evaluated on SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The findings reveal that ELT teachers who graduated from Faculty of Education, like ELT teachers who graduated from Faculty of Letters, believe in the significance and necessity of literature in their reading classes, but do not see themselves as competent in literature use as teachers who graduated from Faculty of Letters. The findings also reveal that curriculum restriction and insufficient class time are a big hindrance against the use of literature in reading classes. Key words: educational background, ELT, literature, teachers’ perceptions, literature use, literary text, teachers’ beliefs v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... iii ÖZET ............................................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... vi ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................ ix LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1 1.1 Statement of the Problem ...................................................................................... 1 1.2 The Purpose of the Study ...................................................................................... 3 1.3 Limitations of the Study ........................................................................................ 3 1.4 Literature Review .................................................................................................. 4 1.4.1 Reading Comprehension ............................................................................. 4 1.4.1.1 Reading Comprehension Strategies and Studies ........................... 11 1.4.1.2 Reading Comprehension and Literature ........................................ 21 1.4.1.3 Reflections of Teachers’ Beliefs and Perceptions on Their Teaching Reading Comprehension ............................................... 37 1.4.2 Comparison of Curricula of ELT and Literature Departments in Turkish Universities .............................................................................................. 44 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................... 59 2.1 The Research Questions ...................................................................................... 59 2.2 Population and Sampling .................................................................................... 60 vi 2.3 Subjects ................................................................................................................. 60 2.4 Data Collection Instrument ................................................................................ 61 2.4.1 The Pilot Study ......................................................................................... 61 2.5 Data Collection Procedure .................................................................................. 62 2.5.1 The Questionnaire .................................................................................... 62 2.6 Data Analysis Procedure .................................................................................... 66 2.7 The Analysis of Research Questions with Relating Items ............................... 68 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS ............................................................................................ 70 3.1 Frequencies of the Items in the Questionnaire.................................................. 70 3.2 The Results of the Descriptive Statistics of the Research Questions............... 81 3.3 The Results of the Items in the Questionnaire Based on the Research Questions .............................................................................................................. 83 3.3.1 The Results of the First Research Question “What do teachers use for reading comprehension in addition to the activities in the course books?”…………………………………………………………………. 83 3.3.2 The Results of the Second Research Question “How do teachers demand literature involvement in addition to syllabi outside the class?” 87 3.3.3 The Results of the Third Research Question “Why do teachers use literature or literary works in their reading classes?” .............................. 89 3.3.4 The Results of the Fourth Research Question “Why do teachers use few or no literary works in their reading classes ?” ........................................ 97 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 107 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................... 115 IMPLICATIONS FOR ELT ...................................................................................... 129 CURRICULUM VITAE ............................................................................................ 131 vii ABBREVIATIONS ELT: English Language Teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language L1: Native Language L2: Second Language NRP: The National Reading Panel ODTU: Middle East Technical University SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences THE: English Times Higher Education TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Curriculum of English Language and Literature Department at Istanbul University……………………………………………… 47 Table 2 Curriculum of English Language and Literature Department at Hacettepe University……………..……………………………… 48 Table 3 Curriculum of English Language Teaching Department at Middle East Technical University………………………………