The main objectives of this study are to report on the use of a modern American novel in university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses in Japan and to investigate teachers' beliefs and students' responses in the classroom. It is usually challenging for practitioners in Japan to incorporate literature into language teaching mainly because literary texts have been misunderstood as inauthentic materials (Saito, 2020) and regarded as inefficient resources to develop learners' communication skills. Furthermore, there seems to be a great number of teachers who have never used literature in their English classrooms; consequently, they have no idea how to use it effectively. As Hirvela (1989) pointed out, these teachers may avoid literature because it requires more preparation time and more enlightened teaching. Considering this situation, five university lecturers, including the presenter, have worked collaboratively to publish a textbook in which a newly written modern American short novel is presented with annotations and pre- and post-reading exercises so that this text could be widely and relatively easily used in EFL classrooms even by less-experienced language teachers who are interested in the use of literature. During this process, we have realized that there are some social and cultural issues that might be difficult for Japanese learners to understand; accordingly, the teachers in this project needed to specifically address these issues in columns and annotations as well as to provide linguistic and grammatical aids for the students. We also decided to adopt the idea of active learning when we planned pre- and post-reading activities so that the learners could actively participate in reading the text and doing the activities to enhance their communication skills, not just quietly reading the text by themselves.
Given the above reflections, this presentation addresses the following research questions: 'Why and how is the modern American novel introduced to the university EFL classroom in Japan?'; and 'How do the students respond to it?' To answer the first question, open-ended questions will be asked to these five teachers in the publication project to investigate their beliefs about writing the textbook on a modern American novel and using it in their university English courses. For the second research question, a questionnaire survey will be given to the students who will have read the novel in their English classroom over one semester. It is anticipated that the analysis of these qualitative studies will provide insight into not only the potential of literary texts but also the role of noncanonical literature in the EFL classroom. Moreover, the study may reveal some issues teachers need to specifically address when they introduce literature to foreign language teaching, which could be an obstacle for the students otherwise.
Bibliography
Hirvela, A. (1989). Five bad reasons why language teachers avoid literature. British Journal of Language Teaching 27: 127-132.
Saito, Y. (2020). Pedagogical stylistics as a discipline for bridging the gap between literary studies and English language teaching in Japan. Studies in English literature (Regional branches combined issue) vol.12. 129-138.
