Abstract
Literature is life. It is the gateway of looking the world outside. We can learn, understand and appreciate the world. Reading literature is the best way to know who we are, what we are, and what we used to be. Using descriptive correlational research design, the study ventured on assessing the literary appreciation skills and reading performance of university students in literature, which may provide input to propose innovative learning tasks in enhancing their literary competence. Ninety students enrolled in the literature subject of the three college departments of one campus of a public higher education institution in the Philippines, were the participants of the study. Findings revealed that the students have a moderate level of skill in literary appreciation areas but a relatively low skill level in recognizing author’s point of view, ability to judge the text, recognizing personal philosophy based on literary text read, and relating the stories to their personal lives. Meanwhile, students showed fair performance in literature learning, while literary appreciation skills and reading performance differed when students are grouped according to their college affiliations. Furthermore, a positive relationship exits between literary appreciation skills and reading performance of the students. This study proposes the implementation of twenty-nine innovative learning tasks for literature classes. The different learning tasks were presented in this paper for classroom use.
Keywords
Introduction
Education in the 21st-century requires innovation and creativity. One of the 21st-century learning skills needed today is the learning and innovation skills identified in the P21’s framework for 21st-century learning being developed from the input of educators, businesses and governments around the world. P21 cites that this learning and innovation skills pertain to think creatively, work creatively with others, and implement innovations by acting on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution in the field.
In many universities around the world, the study of literature is an indispensable component of the curriculum, because it allows students to create significant contexts that are full of descriptive language interpretation and interesting characters (Van, 2009). Hence, teaching literature reading incorporates a profound range of vocabulary learning, dialogues, and prose. It enhances students’ imagination, cultural awareness, and critical thinking about plots, themes, and characters.
In the Philippines, literature is a compulsory subject in the general education curriculum of senior high school and in universities and colleges, particularly for those students who specialize in language and literature courses. Literature offers students other skills such as reading, writing, and speaking. Teaching literature is not only concerned with teaching students how to perform literary interpretation and analysis but also helps students develop sensitivity, self-awareness, and a greater understanding of the world and other people.
This study was conducted to assess the literary appreciation and reading performance of university students in one campus of a state university in Region 02, Philippines. Generally, it will help teachers to harness the country’s literary resources, and to enhance their classroom teaching through a variety of interactive and integrative methods in teaching literature. This study may also help teachers to improve their literature appreciation skills by using technological resources in the explanation and discussion of many literature courses. The dearth of research literature on literary appreciation skills and reading performance of students at the university level encouraged the researcher to carry out the study.
Literary Competence and Literary Appreciation
Literature requires different skills from plain reading comprehension text. One of the skills of literary competence is literary appreciation. Fakoya and Ogunpitan (2001) found that literary appreciation can be called the process by which the reader of a work of literature acquires a meaningful understanding of its theme and gains personal insight into the structure of this same work.
Developing literary competence is one of the most important outcomes of teaching literature. This refers to students’ internalizing the grammar of literature, which allows them to convert linguistic sequences into literary structures and meanings. The essence of literature offers students an opportunity to perceive and evaluate their own worth as individuals.
The enjoyment of reading literature comes from engaging with themes and topics that are intrinsically interesting. Because it deals with ideas, things, sensations, and events that either constitute part of the reader’s experience or that they can enter into imaginatively, they are able to relate what they are reading with their own lives (Abida, 2016). Likewise, Mallikarjun (2003) states that literature that is studied for its intrinsic merit and enjoyment is a powerful educational tool that imbues values, style of language, and many other opportunities for learning into the minds of learners. Literature is an example of language in use and is a context for language use. Thus, studying the language of literary texts as language in operation can be seen as enhancing the learners’ appreciation of aspects of different systems of language organization. Consequently, teaching language through literature acts as a means of cultural enrichment and acquaints the learner with understanding how communication takes place in their own context. It involves learners mentally and physically and makes language learning more interesting and exciting.
Innovative Learning Tasks
In fact, Nilsen and Donnellson (2009) posit that literary appreciation is the process by which one gauges one’s interpretive response as a reader to a literary work. Studies relating to literary appreciation skills and innovative learning tasks of students have been conducted by researchers. Bunsom, Singhasiri, and Vungthong (2011) found that employing literature-based learning activities in the classroom stemmed from the teacher’s desire to see students read texts that are familiar to them to stimulate their literary appreciation skills. In fact, Rita (2012) investigated the effectiveness of innovative literary-based learning activity to improve literary appreciation of students. Results showed that using such learning activity, 95.3% of students indicated a positive attitude toward literary appreciation. The appreciation of the students makes them realize the importance of responding to literary works to develop character.
Research claims that teaching strategies employed by the teacher as a classroom manager affect students’ achievement. The assumption is that learners are motivated to actively participate in the teaching-learning process when appropriate strategies are used by the teacher. These strategies serve as a guide for students to attain their optimal capability as learners.
Empirical researchers recommend research-based strategies that teachers can use to improve student performance. Stoop (2011) contends that effective teachers acknowledge student differences, build collaborative learning relationships, have clear communication with parents, provide feedback to students, and use strategies enabling students to take responsibility for their own learning. Further confirmed by Jepketer, Kombo, and Kyalo (2015) is that strategies applied by the teacher affect and reinforce student performance. Effective teaching and learning are indicators of quality teachers and quality teaching performance, which are all determining factors of a well-designed educational system (Medupin, Abubakre, Adebayo, Enock, & Sulayman, 2015). According to Djamarah and Zain (2010), the method of teaching involves a teaching strategy to achieve expected goals. By utilizing an accurate method, the teacher will achieve the goal of teaching smoothly. When the goals are formulated in order that students gain certain skills, the methods that are used must be adapted to these goals. Thus, teachers must use methods that support teaching and learning activities, so they can be used as effective tools to achieve their goals.
In accordance with the above-cited studies, the focus is on the use of innovative learning tasks in enhancing students’ literature appreciation and reading skill. The studies were used to support the teaching of literature through the use of innovative learning tasks.
Teaching literature
Teaching literature can become motivating and interesting when appropriate teaching strategies are employed by the teacher in the classroom. Very often, teachers either lecture or use question-and-answer or recitation methods. Recitation is often not appropriate because the question remains at the level of who-what-when-where, but hardly ever how and why. Li (2011) noted that the teacher’s job is to nourish and enhance students’ intelligence. In the conventional approach to literature teaching, the teacher only focuses on linguistic competence such as reading, recalling, and reciting literary works.
Revisiting literary appreciation skills, teachers become aware of how they can develop the literacy competence of their students. Such information will further provide measures on how to improve their teachings particularly by using innovative learning tasks in their literature classroom. In fact, Soltan (2010) found that most of the professors of literature in universities use the lecture method. Hence, many university students depend only on critical notes provided by their professors rather than reading the authentic literary text. As a result, literature learning becomes uninteresting. It is on this ground that prompted the researcher to conduct this study.
Teaching literature to students requires creativity, ingenuity, and innovativeness. In this way are the literary appreciation skills of their students developed. Teachers must be able to design effective learning tasks to help learners learn literature through the most innovative and modern ways. Ahmad and Aziz (2009) claimed that in the process of developing students’ literary appreciation, teachers have a very significant role.
From the aforementioned studies carried out by Rita (2012), Bunsom et al. (2011), and Shier, Soltan, and El-Hilaly (2014), it becomes apparent that the use of innovative teaching strategies and techniques in literature teaching are beneficial in enhancing the literary reading appreciation and performance of students. Hence, the researcher becomes aware of the research gap regarding the limited literature teaching strategies employed by the teacher in the classroom. There is a need to conduct a study investigating the level of literary appreciation skills and reading performance of university students to propose a number of innovative teaching strategies to improve students’ literary appreciation skills.
The modern concept of education asks for innovations to be introduced into the educational system, thus, the opportunity to educate 21st century individuals cannot be taken for granted by any academic enterprise. The quality of education offered is measured by the quality of leadership manifested by the teachers (Magulod, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d, 2017e).
As a theoretical basis for the use of innovative learning tasks in teaching literature, constructivism learning theory rejects the traditional assumption that there is an ultimate true knowledge. It embraces the idea that learners construct their own knowledge and find literary meaning through individual or collective endeavor. The constructivist learning environment allows students to discover, examine, discuss, and interpret knowledge among themselves (Altun & Toy, 2015).
This article assesses the level of literary appreciation skills of students in one campus of a state university in Region 02, Philippines, with the end goal of widening the scope of teachings and strategies that literature teachers may adopt to become more effective. As such, this study supports effective utilization of innovative learning tasks to enhance the literary appreciation skill of students.
Purpose of the Research
This study generally aims to ascertain the level of literary appreciation skills of students with the end goal of proposing innovative learning tasks to enhance their literary appreciation skills. Specifically, it seeks to:
Identify the students’ perceived level of literary appreciation skills;
Determine the students’ performance in literature reading;
Ascertain the difference between the students’ performance and level of literary appreciation skills when grouped according to gender and college departments; and
Test the significant relationship between the students’ performance in literature and their level of literary appreciation skills.
Method
Research Design
The descriptive method using evaluative and correlational research design was utlized in this study. It was designed to look into the level of students’ literary appreciation skills and their literary performance to provide inputs for more meaningful literary learning.
Participants
The participants were the 90 third-year students from the College of Teacher Education (CTEd), College of Technology (COT), and College of Information and Computing Sciences (CICS) of one campus of a public higher education institution in Region 02, Philippines, who were enrolled in the subject of Philippine Literature. Figure 1 shows that out of 90 participants, there were 41 male and 49 female participants. Because the population of participants is small, the complete count was employed.
Frequency distribution of participants on sex and college affiliation.
Participation of the students was voluntary. The respondents were informed that the data gathered would be treated with utmost confidentiality. In like manner, drawing of student-participants was done in intact groups so as not to disturb the students in their other class schedules. The study was limited only to the third-year college students of one campus of a public higher education institution in Region 02, Philippines.
The respondents were given one week to read the stories as a requirement in their literature subject prior to the administration of a literary appreciation test to provide the background knowledge about the different stories. The test results served as the summative evaluation. The results of the literary tests were used to determine the cognitive level of the participants. This study only works for the particular group of respondents who belong within the same age brackets and have a moderate level of literary appreciation skills while it proposes a number of innovative learning strategies to enhance these students’ literary appreciation.
Research Instruments
The study utilized two sets of research instruments. First, a 14-item survey questionnaire was used to measure literary appreciation skills. For its internal consistency, the instrument was pretested, and a Cronbach’s alpha of .83 was returned. Second, a 30-item literary test was constructed by the researcher. The instruments were subjected to item analysis, and a reliability of .76 was obtained using the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20.
Data Analysis
Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage were used to analyze the data on the level of students’ performance and their literary appreciation skills. Inferential statistics such as independent sample t test and one-way ANOVA were used to test the significant difference in the level of performance and literary appreciation skills when grouped according to selected variables. Finally, to note the relationship between the level of performance and literary appreciation skills of the participants, the Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used.
Results and Discussion
Students’ Level of Literary Appreciation Skills
This section presents the participants’ level of attainment on the 14 literary appreciation skills. The succeeding results show how the participants perceived themselves in appreciating literary texts and understanding the themes of literature, imagery expression, and other literary devices. Table 1 discloses the level of literary appreciation skills of the participants.
Level of Literary Appreciation Skills.
Note. Results can be scaled according to the following measures: Very High = 4.20-5.00; High = 3.40-4.19; Neutral = 3.60-2.39; Low = 1.80-2.59; Very Low = 1.00-1.79.
The participants have a fair level of literary appreciation skills as evidenced by the grand mean of 2.67 and a descriptive interpretation of neutral. These data imply that the participants have not yet developed a high level of literary competence, which would allow them to internalize the world within the text as well as to permit them to visualize the images in the literary works.
Furthermore, the participants have not yet developed the skill to read literary genres and texts in a delightful and enjoyable manner. Thus, in nurturing the literary appreciation skills of these students, the design of effective learning tasks based on the actual findings of this study should be considered by teachers to help students appreciate literature in the most salient ways.
Among the 14 identified literary appreciation skills, the highest rated item was “recognition of the parts of the plot,” which implies that the participants are able to identify the sequence of events in a literary masterpiece, which may be necessary for the development of literary appreciation skills of students (Magulod, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d, 2017e).
Meanwhile, there are four literary appreciation skills rated on a low level by the participants. These include recognition of the point of view used by the author (M = 2.28); ability to judge the text in which generalizations, assumptions, hypotheses, theories, and arguments are formed (M = 2.21); recognition of personal philosophy based on the theme of the solution (M = 2.29); and relating the story to personal lives (M = 2.30). These findings only suggest that most of the participants lack skills in the ability to value literature learning. As these skills are considered essential in the development of students’ character, there is serious need to facilitate necessary interventions.
Recognizing the authors’ point of view is necessary in literary appreciation skills of students as it allows them to understand the author’s purpose in writing the story, which can be stated explicitly or implicitly in the text. Meanwhile, the ability of the students to judge the text in which generalizations, assumptions, hypotheses, theories, and arguments are formed is another important literary appreciation skill that should be enhanced by the teacher. The arguments, claims, or lines of reasoning forwarded by the author or writer should be clearly understood by the students so that they can simply offer their stand and provide reasons for their claims.
Table 1 also presents the literary appreciation skills that are rated uncertain or neutral by the participants. These include determining the tone, mood, and style of the author (M = 3.28); recognizing how the characters are introduced (M = 2.79); recognizing the purpose of the title (M = 2.40); finding answers to a question or a solution to a lifetime problem (M = 2.79); coming up with enrichment activities like artworks, creative dramatics, story writing, puppetry, and the like based on the selection read (M = 3.17); concretizing the imagery of language used by the author in the story (M = 2.30); recognizing the prime scheme used by the author (M = 2.79); and recognizing imagery employed by the author (M = 2.28).
These skills imply that the participants have a fair or moderate level in exhibiting these literature appreciation skills, which need to be nurtured by the teacher through designing an effective learning plan for them to be interested in engaging in literature reading. This finding agrees with Abusafi (2015) that the majority of students lack confidence in displaying literary appreciation skills, especially when criticizing aspects such as theme, plot, character, setting, style, irony, and point of view.
Students’ Performance in Literary Reading Appreciation Analysis
This section deals with investigating the level of literary appreciation skills of the participants through reading selected literary works and answering critical, creative, and value-application questions.
As shown from Table 2, the data clearly show that the mean score of the participants is 16.14. This indicates that the level of performance of the participants is “satisfactory.” This level of performance may be attributed to the uncertainty of the students in answering correctly the literary appreciation skills questions.
The Table 2 also shows that most of the participants obtained a 13-18 score bracket with a frequency of 40 while no students obtained 1-6 and 25-30 score brackets. Furthermore, this means that the students have not yet fully mastered literary appreciation skills, particularly the critical questions that ask about judgment of the styles of the authors. Students critique the styles of authors in developing their pieces but not to a high extent. Likewise, the students have not yet fully mastered the skill of relating to their lives the concepts given in the literacy pieces they read. Hence, the use of innovative learning tasks to further enhance the literary appreciation skills of the participants is necessary. In her study, Cabasan (2011) found that the majority of entering college students were on the low level of reading comprehension skills, hence, they need to be equipped with the required skills in reading comprehension to be able to cope with academic reading to succeed in their college endeavors.
Literary Reading Performance.
Difference Between the Students’ Performance and Literary Appreciation Skills
The significant differences in the students’ reading performance and literary appreciation skills, when taken according to selected personal variables, provide better insights on what specific innovative learning tasks are suited to the different groups of participants. The result in Table 3 shows the test of the difference between the students’ level of literary appreciation skills when grouped according to gender and degree programs.
Difference Between Students’ Level of Literary Appreciation Skills Along Gender and College Affiliation.
Note. COT = College of Technology; CTEd = College of Teacher Education; CICS = College of Information and Computing Sciences.
Significant at .01.
As seen in Table 3, gender shows no significant difference in the literary appreciation skill of the participants while a significant difference is seen when the participants are grouped according to college departments.
The result of the independent sample t test shows that students’ literary appreciation skill does not differ where gender is concerned. The finding supports Asgarabadi, Rouhi, and Jafarigohar (2015) who found no significant difference between the male and female learners in literary reading comprehension. It can be inferred from the study that both male and female students have the same level of literary reading appreciation skills.
However, the finding of the study contradicts Lynn and Mikk (2009) who investigated sex differences in reading achievement, finding that girls have higher achievement in reading attributed to their deeper engagement in language-related activities than boys. Likewise, Logan and Johnston (2009) also found that girls had better reading comprehension, read more frequently, and had a more positive attitude to reading than did boys.
Meanwhile, the result of the ANOVA showed that the literary appreciation skills of the participants when grouped according to their college departments incurred a significant difference.
As evidenced by the computed means, the CTEd scored significantly higher compared with the other college departments. This finding may be attributed to the intended program learning outcomes of the three colleges, where CTEd put emphasis on the development of future teachers who are linguistically and literarily competent while the COT and CICS put a premium on the tactual and kinesthetic skills of students as these are technical skill-oriented college departments.
Difference Between the Students’ Performance in Literary Appreciation Reading
Table 4 reveals the difference between the students’ level of literary reading analysis performance when grouped according to gender and college departments.
Difference Between Students’ Level of Literary Appreciation Skills Along Gender and College Affiliation.
Note. COT = College of Technology; CTEd = College of Teacher Education; CICS = College of Information and Computing Sciences.
Significant at .05.
This study reveals there is no difference between the literary reading performance of the participants when grouped according to gender while the difference is spelled out when the participants are grouped according to college departments.
The result of the t test shows that the null hypothesis of this study is accepted. This means that the participants have almost the same level of performance regardless of gender. Accordingly, ANOVA also revealed that the computed f value is 16.987 with the p value of .00, suggesting that the null hypothesis of this study is rejected. Hence, there is a significant difference between the participants’ literary reading appreciation analysis when grouped according to college departments in favor of the CTEd. This means that participants who are education students show higher performance in the literary reading analysis test. Again, this might be attributed to the intended learning outcomes of the three college departments.
The Relationship Between Literary Appreciation Skills and Literary Reading Performance
Table 5 shows the correlation between the literary reading performance and literary appreciation skills of the participants. The study finds that there is a significant relationship between the literary reading analysis performance and literary appreciation skills of the participants. Therefore, the null hypothesis, which states that there is no significant relationship between the two variables, was rejected.
The Relationship Between Student Performance and Literary Appreciation Skills.
Table 5 results imply that the literary reading performance of the participants is related to their literary appreciation skills. Hence, there is a need to enhance the literary appreciation skills of students with the use of interesting learning tasks, strategies, and methods. This also means that if reading experience is remembered as a delightful, enjoyable pursuit, students will be encouraged to read more. And they will be inspired to look forward to more literary encounters in class and ultimately to improve their literary reading analysis performance. The finding concurs with Adejimola and Ojoulape’s (2013) that there is a significant relationship between English reading performance and literary appreciation skills of students.
Conclusion
This study assessed the level of literary appreciation skills and literary reading performance of students with the end view of proposing innovative learning tasks to improve their literary appreciation skills. The study revealed that the students have a fair level of literary appreciation skills and a satisfactory level of performance in literary reading. College affiliation spelled out a significant difference in the literary appreciation skills and literary reading analysis performance of the students. Finally, there was a significant, positive relationship between the performance and literary appreciation skills of the participants. To enhance the literary appreciation skills of the participants, 29 learning activities are proposed (Appendix A).
The findings of the study generally imply that literary reading performance of students is dependent on their literary appreciation skills. Hence, when literary appreciation skills are enhanced, the better the students can manifest a higher level of knowledge in literature reading. This will allow students to understand better the human emotions, insights, themes, and ideas, and significant human experiences conveyed in different literary texts. Therefore, the utilization of innovative learning tasks will make teaching and reading literature more interesting.
On the basis of these conclusions, the researcher recommends the following: (a) results of this study should be a basis for literature teachers to consider the use of innovative and interactive teaching strategies in their literature classes; (b) students should be encouraged by their teachers to personally enhance their literary appreciation skills to improve their literary reading performance; (c) college deans should encourage language and literature teachers to attend professional development seminars and conduct research pertaining to the use of innovative and interactive teaching strategies; (d) language and literature teachers of the three colleges should consider the use of differentiated teaching methods appropriate to the program learning outcomes of the colleges.
For the limitations of the present study and future research directions, this article limits its scope to only literary appreciation skills and the reading performance of the students through self-assessment and objective testing, and to the question of whether there is a significant effect of the proposed innovative learning tasks of experimental research design in teaching literature that should be considered for future investigations.
Recommendations
Proposed Strategies to Enhance Literary Appreciation Skills
Based on the findings of this study, a series of teaching strategies are introduced in this article as interventions to enhance the literary appreciation skills of the students. The relatively low literary appreciation skills of students, including those of recognition of author’s point of view; judging the text in which generalizations, assumptions, hypotheses, theories, and arguments are formed; recognition of personal philosophy; and relating the story to personal lives, indicate that there is a need that may eventually affect students’ performance in literature learning.
In addition to low skill levels, the study also finds a relatively uncertain level of students’ skills in recognizing imagery, characters, and prime scheme; the purpose of the title; and determining the author’s tone and style. Likewise, other literary appreciation skills rated by the participants on a fair level may be enhanced with the use of innovative learning tasks.
The innovative learning tasks shown in Appendix A can be implemented by literature teachers to directly benefit students who are struggling in their literature classes. Appendix A presents 28 of these innovative and interesting learning activities.
Footnotes
Appendix
Literary Appreciation Skills Questionnaire.
| Literary appreciation skills | Very high | High | Uncertain | Low | Very low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Recognize the point of view used by the author | |||||
| 2. Recognize imagery employed by the author | |||||
| 3. Recognize how the characters are introduced | |||||
| 4. Recognize the prime scheme used by the author | |||||
| 5. Recognize the purpose of the title | |||||
| 6. Recognize the parts of the plot | |||||
| 7. Determine the tone, mood, and style of the author | |||||
| 8. Judge the text in which generalizations, assumptions, hypotheses, theories, and arguments are formed | |||||
| 9. Recognize evidence proving a universal truth or philosophy | |||||
| 10. Relate the story to their lives | |||||
| 11. Find answers to a question or a solution to a lifetime problem | |||||
| 12. Recognize personal philosophy based on the theme of the solution | |||||
| 13. Come up with enrichment activities like artworks, creative dramatics, story writing, puppetry, and the like based on the selection read | |||||
| 14. Concretize the imagery of language used by the author in the story |
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.