Critical Literature Pedagogy: A Perspective from an EFL Setting

Muzakki Afifuddin

and A. Effendi Kadarisman

Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang

Universitas Negeri Malang

Keywords: Adult Learners; Critical Thinking; Critical Literature Pedagogy; Literature in EFL Setting

Abstract: The paper aims at exploring the existence of Borsheim-Black, Macaluso, and Petrone’s concept of Critical

Literature Pedagogy (2014) from the learners’ perspective in an EFL Setting. As a new concept in the

teaching of Literature, it aims at encouraging the readers to stand with and against the literary texts. Reading

with the literary text means that the readers need to be familiar with the traditional approaches to literature

from comprehending storylines to developing thematic interpretation. On the other hand, reading against the

literary text challenges readers to reach beyond the text, read between the lines, and discover power

promoted and hidden in the text. Within the Literature classrooms in EFL settings, this concept raises

several challenges from the learners’ linguistic competence in English and from the learners’ literary

competence. This paper then raises the question on the existence of critical literature pedagogy in EFL

settings and tries to discover evidence that the EFL learners may have possessed a certain level of critical

literacy within the process of reading literary texts. Furthermore, this paper hopefully concludes that Critical

Literature Pedagogy may become a standard approach in the teaching of literature in EFL settings that

promotes literary analyses that are closer to the learners’ milieu.

1 INTRODUCTION

Critical thinking has been developed as a framework

of teaching and assessing students’ achievement in

learning since Bloom drafted the Taxonomy of

Educational Objectives in 1956. Then in 2001,

Kratwohl et al. (2002) revised the taxonomy into the

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. The taxonomy later is

applied within the teaching of functional literacy or

the linguistic skills of English. While the taxonomy

covers the knowledge dimension and the cognitive

process dimension, many language teachers use the

cognitive process dimension taxonomy to deal with

the process of teaching, while the knowledge

dimension becomes neglected even though it is as

important as the cognitive process dimension. All

that can be said is that the cognitive process

dimension taxonomy is more observable than the

knowledge dimension taxonomy.

The knowledge dimension taxonomy of the

revised taxonomy covers the factual knowledge,

conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and

metacognitive knowledge. The latter involves

knowledge about cognition in general as well as

awareness of and knowledge about one’s own

cognition. This kind of self-knowledge and self-

awareness about the world which become the basis

of Paulo Freire (2000) in developing his idea on

Critical Literacy. There is a need to understand the

pedagogical situation where some education seems

to be oppressing learners with some knowledge that

the learners do not want to encounter

unintentionally, Critical Literacy becomes a

liberation of power and identity within pedagogy. In

the language pedagogy perspectives, this kind of

liberation of power and identity becomes eminent

especially in the foreign language pedagogy. The

foreign language pedagogy has been and can be a

real pressure towards the learners as well as the

teachers just because they are unable to reach a

certain expectation while the world demands these

people to learn and be able to perform the foreign

language linguistic skills or literacies such as

reading, writing, speaking, and listening. On the

other hand, critical literacy views the previous

literacies as social practices in which texts are not

seen as neutral texts but noticeable with designated

interests and concealed agenda. Such texts are easily

found in the foreign language pedagogy. Those texts

sometimes bring foreign socio-cultural bound

Aﬁfuddin, M. and Kadarisman, A.

Critical Literature Pedagogy: A Perspective from an EFL Setting.

DOI: 10.5220/0009912828772885

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2018), pages 2877-2885

ISBN: 978-989-758-458-9

2877

contexts and vocabulary that are not easily

understandable in the learners’ context. In this

context, a study by Ko (2013) shows that critical

literacy helps the teachers and the learners to

question the status quo of the foreign language texts

and challenge the existing knowledge and the social

order within the foreign language texts.

Another kind of the noticeably-not-neutral

texts are the literary texts. The literary texts which

are semiotically rich, in this post-modern era,

become a certain discourse that can be constructed,

deconstructed, and reconstructed to represent certain

locality and identity of the readers, in this case, as

the learners. This certain complexity is then seen by

Borsheim-Black, Macaluso, and Petrone as a

challenge in pedagogical perspective (2014). They

developed a theory on Critical Literature Pedagogy.

Discovering a deeper complexity of the

teaching of Literature in an English Foreign

Language Setting, observing on how Critical

Literature Pedagogy is applied in an EFL Setting,

this study tries to be one of the pioneers in the study

by raising the following problems:

1. At what extent do the classrooms of literature in

the EFL setting include the dimensions of

Critical Literature Pedagogy?

2. Are the learners in the classrooms of Literature

in the EFL setting provided with space and time

to perform competences required by the

dimensions of Critical Literature Pedagogy?

2 LITERARY REVIEW

2.1 The Teaching of Literature in EFL

Setting

Carter and Long (1991) theorize that the common

practice of literature pedagogy or the teaching of

Literature in EFL setting holds that Literature is seen

as a cultural model of English, as a language model

of English, or as a media for learners’ personal

growth. The first perspective values literature as a

means of accumulated wisdom that has been taught

and felt within a culture. Through this perspective,

the learners are expected to come to perceive

tradition of thought, feeling, and artistic form within

the heritage that the literary texts bring. The second

perspective justifies literature as a language model;

that the teaching of literature promotes language

development. This perspective puts the learners in

touch with subtler and more creative uses of

language. The proponents of this model argue that

language is only a literary medium. Since literature

is made from language, the more learners can

understand a language, the better the learners will

understand the literary texts. The last perspective

aims at helping the learners to achieve an

engagement with the reading of literary texts. This

kind of engagement can be seen through the

enjoyment of reading and love for literature as they

continue to engage with literature throughout their

lives. This perspective is seen rewarding since it

results from learning how to appreciate the literary

texts and from engaging a certain competence that is

already within the learners.

Carter and Long furthermore distinguish

between the study of literature and the use of

literature as a resource. The study of literature

involves reading literature within an academic

institutionalized setting purposes of obtaining some

qualifications in literary studies, while using

literature as a resource suggests a less academic

though no less serious approach to the reading of

literature. The latter approach perceive literature as a

special source for personal development and

growth—for encouraging greater sensitivity and

self-awareness and greater understanding about the

world. As a resource, literature provide legitimate

and valuable linguistic opportunities to the language

teacher and allow many of the most valuable

exercises of language learning that can be the case

with many language teaching texts. However, this

approach discourages engagement towards literary

texts since learners will need the knowledge of

literature and knowledge about literature.

Knowledge of literature is related to the

pleasure and enjoyment towards literary texts. The

teachers usually aim to impart personal pleasure in

reading literary texts by providing emotional

experiential involvement knowledge of literature. On

the other hand, knowledge about literature is related

to the accumulation of facts about literary contexts,

dates, authors, titles of texts, names and conventions,

literary terms, etc. However, if a teacher focuses

only on the knowledge about literature, there is

usually little concern with how to use such

information to read literature to oneself and to learn

how to make one’s own meanings. Thus, to

encourage an engagement towards the knowledge of

literature and the knowledge about literature, the

teachers need to trigger it through the selection of

literary texts to which learners can respond

enjoyably and be interested to learning the

knowledge about literature. This way of teaching

literature may challenge learners with low interest

towards literature, especially those who learns

literature in other language setting, and the more

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successful learners are probably those who develop

the necessary linguistic and literary competence.

2.2 Literary Competence

The term Literary Competence, which was

introduced by Jonathan Culler (1975), refers to a

person’s implicit, internalized knowledge of the

rules of literature. Literary competence is the poetics

that every reader of literature possesses to approach

the literary texts. Literary competence is a way of

reaching an interpretation towards the literary texts.

Culler underlines the naturalness of the

interpretation that the readers may find in the

“illusion of reality”. However, in the process of

finding the interpretation, the readers, especially

readers who are from different ages or different

geography of the setting of the literary texts, may

find themselves demystifying the literary texts and

develop their own interpretation. This reader-

oriented characteristic of literary competence

requires learners to possess various implicit,

internalized knowledge of rules of literature, plenty

of acquaintance with literary texts, and abundance

amount of guidance.

On this, Van der Pol (2015) mentions that

Culler suggests a literary work has meaning only

when it is read, or listened to, in a particular way;

when it is read ‘‘as literature’’. The notion of literary

competence does not presume, however, that there is

just one proper (competent) way to read literature. If

in an interpretative community the practices of

reading literature are that readers may interpret

works in a variety of ways, then that is a fact about

literary competence. Literary competence therefore

is both a characteristic of readers (an internalized

story grammar) and a description of that competence

(a descriptive grammar or poetics). In an EFL

setting, Kayad (2015) specifically defines literary

competence—as a part of the literary literacy—as an

adequate knowledge of literature in English, moving

beyond the basic knowledge of literary terms and

concepts toward the understanding of literature in its

broader sense, including curricula.

Since competence underlies a certain

performance, to observe the literary competence,

one must require activities that can initiate the

performance of the competence, such as by reading

aloud. In her research, Van der Pol furthermore

proves that Culler’s literary competence can be used

in an educational design experiments to make

explicit the implicit readings of young children,

showing what informs their responses,

interpretations and solutions to particular textual

problems by reading picturebooks aloud (2015).

Another study by Edenburg shows that literary

competence is associated with recall, and it provides

the basis for identifying a text outside of its original

context (2010).

Culler’s perspective of Literary Competence

is similar to Carter and Long’s perspective on the

knowledge about literature. Culler did not mention

much about enjoyment towards literary texts, which

is related to knowledge of literature. This is a big

concern since, in English as a foreign language

setting, the teaching of literature faces a diversity of

approaches whether the teachers want to teach

knowledge of literature or knowledge about

literature or both knowledge are introduced but in a

limited space and time.

Focusing on the combination of knowledge of

literature and knowledge about literature, Jane Spiro

(1991) developed a concept of literary competence

that covers them. Spiro’s concept of literary

competence is built by six indivisible aspects: (1)

informed appreciation of literature, (2) ability to

respond appropriately to all literature in the target

language, (3) ability to analyse and define responses

in literature, (4) ability to relate literature to one’s

personal experience/to empathize with text, (5)

ability to place literature within a wider

social/cultural/linguistic context, and (6) enjoyment

of literature. As a holistic concept, this concept of

literary competence can embrace both knowledge of

literature and knowledge about literature and also

embrace all learners of literature in any setting.

However, the indivisibility of the aspects is

still questionable. In the teaching of Literature in

EFL setting, the aspects may not surface at all times.

This appearance of literary competence in teaching

of literature in an EFL setting results a few studies

documenting it. The studies so far have been

concerned with the need of literary competence, the

role of the teachers in improving learners’ literary

competence, and methods to teach literature in EFL

setting. On his study, Isenberg (1990) illustrates how

a learner with a limited knowledge of English and

with limited literary experience can approach the

analysis of a poem and arrive at a relatively complex

understanding of its meaning with the help of the

teacher who manages the literary texts given within

a syllabus.

Furthermore, within the modern teaching of

literature, reader response is seen as the best method

to reveal learners’ literary competence. A study by

Fialho (2007) provides a convincing evidence about

the use of reader response to reveal learners’ process

of interpreting the literary texts. Through the reader

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response, the learners undergo the process of

foregrounding and refamiliarization to come to an

interpretation of the literary texts. On the other hand,

these learners also develop a new perspective on the

world around them and themselves through

interpreting literary texts.

Another study that uses reader response

towards literary texts is by Afifuddin (2014). This

study focuses on how the EFL learners respond

towards English poems. As a result, being very far

from the real context of English culture and

experiences, these learners engage to the English

literary texts in their own ways. These learners show

that they have developed their linguistic competence

as well as their literary competence by being able to

engage themselves to the texts through different

perspectives of socio-cultural background. Within

this perspective, the evidence shows that these EFL

learners are capable of applying a certain aspect of

literary competence in engaging to the English

literary texts.

Lastly, a study by Davis, McElhone, and

Tenore (2015) supports the use of reader-texts

interaction in the process of reading comprehension.

The interaction is in the concept of dialogue between

the reader and the texts that develops critical

thinking and discovery of self-identity of the

readers. Due to the criticality of the interaction,

readers may even resist on the meaning and develop

new meanings within the boundary of their own

perspectives and identities along with authorial,

contextual, and disciplinary contexts. This dialogic

interaction is considered as learners’ critical-

literacy-based approaches.

2.3 Critical Literature Pedagogy

Thus, the combination of literary competence and

critical literacy applied in the teaching of literature

may become a new focus in literature pedagogy in

EFL setting. Reader response as the means of the

learners’ literary competence may also provide a

certain discovery of learners’ self-identity that, in an

EFL setting, these students may not fathom the

canonicity of the literary texts, but they can fathom

the literary texts in their own ways.

The combination of the use of canonical

literature and critical literacy is developed into a

new approach of pedagogy called Critical Literature

Pedagogy (Borsheim-Black, et al. 2014). Critical

Literature Pedagogy (CLP) weaves together two

stances: reading with and against a text. Reading

with a text includes familiar approaches of

comprehending storylines, analysing literary

devices, making personal connections,

understanding historical contexts, and developing

thematic interpretations. Typically, however,

literature instruction stops at this stance, which,

while sufficient for most traditional standards and

assessments, does not call into question ideologies

of texts—those values or beliefs that help to frame

and form the text and our reading and teaching of it.

In addition to reading with the canonical texts, CLP

asks learners to read against them to examine how

they are embedded in and shaped by ideologies.

Moreover, although CLP contrasts reading

against and with texts, CLP does not actually see

these two ways of reading as dichotomous. CLP sees

reading with texts as incorporated by reading against

texts whereby the relationship between these ways

of reading text are reciprocal—learning to read with

the texts might be seen as necessary to being able to

read against them. Also, CLP sees that deep thinking

and engagement related to reading against texts for

critical literacies lead to stronger skills related to

reading with texts for academic literacies.

These non-dichotomous perspectives of

reading which are brought by CLP promote certain

key ideas that are divided into five dimensions of

canonicity, contexts, literary elements, reader, and

assessments. The following table shows the

dimensions and the key idea of each dimension. The

following table is simplified due to the limitation of

the study. For your information, all of the

dimensions have the with-and-against perspectives

in approaching the literary texts.

Table 1: Simplified Dimensions and Key Ideas from CLP

(Modified from Borsheim-Black et al. (2014))

Dimension Key Idea from CLP

Canonicity

No text is ideologically neutral.

Contexts

Literary canons have typically

privileged white and male voices;

counterstories can make dominant

ideologies visible.

Literary

Elements

Themes of canonical novels often

reinforce dominant ideologies about

topics like class, achievement, sexual

orientation, etc.

Reader

Readers from culturally dominant

backgrounds often struggle to identify

and question dominant ideologies

because they often remain invisible to

individuals in privileged positions.

Assessments

Readers connect critical understandings

of issues in canonical novels to similar

issues relevant to other contexts.

CLP thus encourages learners to question

canonicity to examine any ideological reasons on

why certain literary texts are considered canonical

but others are not. CLP also encourages learners to

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utilize their identity as one of the convincing reasons

in reading the literary canons. The distance between

the learners and the context of the literary canons in

EFL setting can be a space for CLP as a new

pedagogical approach that accepts the distance.

2.4 Previous Studies

Two studies have inspired this paper. The first study

is a thesis by de Klonia (2015) with an EFL setting

in Sweden. The study focuses on examining how

teachers and students value a certain criteria and

aspects in connection to what literature is used in the

class. Through two empirical web-based

questionnaire surveys, the results show that the

participating teachers valued practical

characteristics, such as level of difficulty, higher

than conceptual characteristics, such as the sexual

orientation of an author or character, when choosing

what literary works to teach because the latter seem

to be problematic and not suitable for secondary

school students. The results also show that both

teachers and students think that critical and ethical

discussion of the chosen works is very important in

the classroom.

Another study is also a thesis by Myers (2018).

She focuses on developing a thorough rationale for

valuing CLP, outlining methods for integrating its

principles, and shedding light on both the

advantages and challenges that doing so can bring to

an English classroom in an English as first language

setting. The study concludes that CLP still need

evaluation due to the risks involved in the

implementation. However, CLP is still a very

essential approach in the teaching of literature in

English as first language setting.

The studies above provide this paper a starting

point and a difference in the focus and the limitation

of the study. While the setting of the first thesis is in

an EFL setting but the socio-cultural background is

close to the texts’ socio-cultural background being

discussed in the classroom, this paper presents an

EFL setting but with a very far socio-cultural

background from the texts’ socio-cultural

background. While the thesis uses web-surveys for

gaining the data, this paper uses observation in

gaining the data similar to the way the second thesis

gains the data. However, the setting of the second

thesis is in an English as a First Language setting,

and classroom action research is also applied to gain

more data.

3 METHODOLOGY

This study employs qualitative research design since

this study combines text analysis, observation, and

interview in gaining the data of the study. The data

of the study are taken from two classrooms of

English Literature in English Letters Department in

Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim

Malang. The setting is believed to represent the

teaching of Literature in EFL setting. To represent

diversity of the data, the observed classrooms are

from different semesters and different subjects. The

first classroom to be observed is the course of Basic

Analysis of English Prose which mostly has the

fourth semester students. The other classroom to be

observed is the course of Advanced Analysis of

English Poetry which mostly has the sixth semester

students. Although the data are taken only within a

limited time—only in two or three meetings—the

findings are believed to be able to answer the

problems of the study.

In gaining the data, the study starts by reading

the syllabi of the courses. Then the study continues

with observing the classrooms to discover the

existence of CLP. Lastly, the study is required to

interview the lecturers of the courses to gain the last

data. The, after all data are gained, they are being

analysed through the CLP dimensions to reach the

solutions to the problems of the study. What must

also be mentioned is that the researcher of the study

is an observer, not one of the lecturers of both

courses.

4 DISCUSSION

4.1 The Syllabi and the Objectives of

the Courses

By the name of the courses, it is obvious that the

courses have different texts to use and focus on

different objectives. The Basic Analysis of English

Prose (BAEP) course uses English prose such as

short stories and novels while the Advanced

Analysis of English Poetry (AAEP) course uses

English poems as the texts to be discussed in the

classroom. Both lecturers of the courses have had

the experience of teaching Literature in the setting

for at least 5 years and have been teaching in the

setting for at least 10 years. Both courses have 14

effective meetings with one additional meeting for

middle semester assessment and another additional

meeting for final semester assessment. Both courses

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are a continuation of previous courses; BAEP is a

continuation of Introduction to English Literature

course given when the students are in the third

semester while AAEP a continuation of Literary

Theory course given in the fifth semester.

According to the syllabi, the courses have

different objectives. BAEP course focuses on

introducing the students to the internal literary

elements of English prose and to the basic analysis

on the internal elements of English prose especially

on discovering the internal elements and relating all

the internal elements to the theme of the selected

English short stories. Based on the interview, the

lecturer chooses to limit the texts to only short

stories aside from the other sub-genres such as

novellas, and novels because he assumes that the

length of the latter genres may distract the students’

enjoyment and engagement to the literary texts. He

also underlines that the objectives of the course are

on identifying the internal elements of the English

prose and relating the discovered literary elements to

the theme of the texts. So, if he uses novellas or

novels, he assumes that there will be too limited

time to be able to provide the students all the

materials and activities he has prepared since the

course only has 14 effective meetings.

On the other hand, AAEP course focuses on

applying certain literary theories or approaches as

perspectives in analysing the selected English

poems. As a continuation of the Literary Theory

course, AAEP provide the students the space to

apply the theories learned from the Literary Theory

course and the Schools of Literary Criticism course

the students take alongside the AAEP course. Based

on the interview, the lecturer chooses several poems

to be analysed individually and in groups within the

perspectives of the schools of literary criticism such

as structuralism, formalism, feminism, Marxism, and

other schools. Each poem is discussed and analysed

in different meetings to enable the students to

explore the poem through the perspectives of

different schools.

Looking at the syllabi and the objectives, the

courses are within different dimensions of Critical

Literature Pedagogy. The BAEP course still limits

itself within the dimension of Canonicity, Contexts,

and Literary Elements while the AAEP course, since

it is an advanced course, it focuses on the more

complex dimensions of Reader and Assessment.

This finding shows that the syllabi and the

objectives of the two Literature courses in this

particular EFL setting have covered the dimensions

of CLP although one of the courses does not follow

CLP key ideas. The BAEP course does not introduce

the students to question the ideologies within the

literary canons provided by the lecturers while the

AAEP course introduces the students to question the

ideologies within the literary canons provided.

4.2 The Classrooms

One of the important findings in the study is the size

of the classrooms. The size of those classrooms is

considered big based on the quantity of the students.

Each classroom contains around 40 to 45 students

with around 30% - 40% male students compared to

60% - 70% female students. The age of the students

are around 19 to 21 years old. As an EFL setting,

this condition is quite common especially in the

teaching of content courses such as Literature.

Facing this kind of challenge, on the interview, the

lecturers mention that it is challenging to be able to

reach the intended objectives of each meeting. Based

on the interview, the interest of the students towards

literary works diverges. The curriculum of the

university obliges the students to take literature or

linguistics as their major in finishing their

undergraduate thesis. So, what happens in the

classroom of the BAEP course, these fourth

semester students are still at their intersection of

choices to take literature or linguistics as their major.

The choices will be decided when they enter the fifth

semester. The diverging choices affect the

atmosphere of the BAEP classroom. Based on the

observation, a lot of students do not show interest in

reading the short stories provided by the lecturer. In

a lecturing style meeting, many students seem

uninterested to the topic of “setting in a story”

presented by the lecturer at the time of the

observation. It is probably due to the complexity of

understanding setting as an essential element of a

story. The students’ disinterest continues when the

students are in a workshop style meeting. When the

lecturer asks the students to mention the setting and

the effect of the setting to the characterization within

the short story from Ambrose Bierce entitled “The

Haunted Valley”, many students find it difficult to

discover. This challenge may also be affected by the

high-level of language of the literary canon used as

the data source of the analysis. At this level,

linguistic competence become one of the

competences needed to read the literary canon.

However, at this stage, the students’ critical literacy

and literary competence may appear to approach

towards the literary text although the students may

have not been aware of their innate critical literacy

and literary competence.

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Different findings are discovered in the

AAEP course classroom. The students of the

classroom are mostly from the sixth semester. These

students are already focusing on Literature major so

the interest towards the topic being discussed in the

classroom is high. The need to master the literary

theories and understand the way in analysing the

selected poems through the perspectives of literary

theories and criticism is also high. The students’

need and interest towards the course is shown by

their activeness in the classroom in group

discussions and their writing. The possible challenge

in this classroom is the students’ inability to

understand each theory completely to use it as a

perspective in analysing the literary texts because of

the limited time and space. This challenge is in

accordance with the key ideas of the CLP dimension

of assessment that the students must have critical

understandings of issues of the literary text that can

be assessed and compared with similar issues within

the schools of literary criticism.

Through the findings about the classrooms, it

is discovered that the dimensions of the CLP are

applied. The curricula and the classrooms represent

all the dimensions of CLP although not in both

classrooms. This concludes that the students are

already given the space and time to engage with the

literary texts through the dimensions of canonicity,

contexts, and reader. However, the dimensions of

literary element and assessment are more demanding

to be engaged with since the space and time

provided are limited. The students will need more

time and space to engage with the literary elements

and assessment outside of the classroom.

4.3 The Reading with and against

Literary Text

The last finding that is related to the CLP within the

classroom is the existence of the reading for

ideology: the reading with the literary text and the

reading against literary text. Considering the key

ideas of each CLP dimensions and the curriculum

and the situation in the classrooms, the concept of

reading with and against literary text may demand a

careful planning. However, there is the possibility of

the existence of reading with and against the literary

text although the key ideas are not explicitly taught

in the classroom since the students may have

possessed certain literary competence. The literary

competence may reside within the students’

unconsciousness due to the result of experience,

reading exposure, and socio-cultural background.

The ability to read with and against the

literary text depends on the classrooms exposure

towards the key ideas within each dimension of

Critical Literature Pedagogy (CLP). Thus, the study

discovers that CLP has not been introduced to the

students in the BAEP course based on several

findings. The BAEP course focuses on providing

lecturing and workshops for the students to

internalize the provided materials. The workshops

are done in focused group discussion method, so the

students can brainstorm for answers and possibilities

of interpretation. The results of the focused group

discussion are in the forms of individual reader

responses that may provide individual interpretation

and personal engagement towards the literary texts.

The lecturer tries to challenge the students to engage

with the literary texts and unintentionally enters the

framework of CLP when he requires the students to

discover and analyse the literary elements. However,

for the fourth semester students, the possibility of

the students to read against the literary text is

minimal since the instructions have not reached into

personal interpretation yet.

Therefore, the CLP has not become the basis

of the BAEP course. The course has not reached the

dimension of canonicity completely since the course

does not provide the time and space to question the

merit of the literary text. Based on the interview, the

literary texts being discussed in the classroom are

the lecturer’s choices based on the canonicity within

American Literature for example Ambrose Bierce’s

“The Haunted Valley” and Bret Harte’s “A Mother

of Five”. It is possible that the students question the

merit of the literary texts, but it is not within the

classroom discussion. The course has also not

reached the dimension of contexts since the course

does not explore on the literary texts’ contexts. The

course has reached the dimension of literary element

since the course focuses on providing the students

with the knowledge about literature and the ability to

read with the literary texts only, without providing

the students with the ability to read against the

literary texts since the latter ability needs more

knowledge. The course has not completely reached

the dimension of reader since the students have not

had a formal time and space to engage themselves

with the literary text in in the process of

interpretation. However, within their reader

responses, the study finds that the students have

performed this kind of engagement in their

interpretation towards the literary text because they

possess certain literary competence. The class also

has not reached the dimension of assessments since

the class still focuses on providing the students the

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ability to do basic analysis on the literary elements

of literary texts, but not advanced analysis on the

literary texts using literary criticism theories.

On the other hand, the findings discovered

from the AAEP course provide different

perspectives. The course focuses on applying literary

criticism theories towards literary texts especially

within the genre of poetry. Several prominent poems

are used in this course such as John Keats’ “To

Autumn”, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”, Thomas

Hardy’s “Channel Firing”, and Robert Hayden’s

“Those Winter Sundays”. The course provides the

student space and time to internalize the literary

criticism theories with focused-group discussion,

individual quizzes, and group presentations on

applying the theories after the middle of the

semester. The lecturer tries to challenge the students

to use the theories that they have got from the

previous semester and from the other course that

focuses on discussing the schools of literary

criticism. The lecturer tries to be open to the

students’ interpretations and analysis although she

may have had her own preferences of interpretation

and analysis.

Based on the key ideas of CLP, the course

has already provided space and time for the students

to engage with and explore the literary text.

However, from the students’ reader responses, the

students have not had a chance to engage themselves

in questioning the canonicity of the literary texts

provided in the classroom. The course has explored

into the dimension of contexts since some of the

theories being used in the classroom approach

contexts such as the history, society, or biography of

the author. The course has also encountered the

dimension of literary elements since the students

must use the literary elements as a starting point of

the analysis to identify whether the literary elements

present a certain ideological agenda. The course has

also explored the dimension of reader since certain

parts of the reader responses provide engagement

with the readers identity. Lastly, the course is within

the dimension of assessment since the students are

provided with literary criticism theories to interpret

literary texts, however, the students have not had a

chance to relate the literary criticism theories with

certain ideologies or their own ideologies.

Thus, the course has provided space and time

to engage with the four dimensions of CLP. The

dimension of canonicity is not being questioned in

this course because the students focus much further

on the application of the theories of literary criticism

which concerns more on the dimensions of contexts,

literary elements, readers, and assessment. When the

lecturer gives the students freedom to assess and

engage with the literary works, unintentionally, the

lecturer has provided the students space and time to

read with or against the literary text.

In comparison, the recent findings show that

both courses are within the dimensions of Critical

Literature Pedagogy. However, each course covers

different dimensions and different approach in

reading the literary text. The table below shows the

comparison between the courses.

Table 2: The Existing Dimensions of CLP.

Courses BAEP AAEP

Dimensions Read

With

Read

Against

Read

With

Read

Against

Canonicity  - - -

Contexts  -  

Literary

Elements

 -  

Reader - -  

Context - -  

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper has presented an evidence on how the

classrooms of Literature in an EFL Setting have

already been within Critical Literature Pedagogy.

The findings have provided the conclusion that the

lecturer as the instructor and the department as the

curriculum developer have unintentionally explored

the dimensions of Critical Literature Pedagogy. The

students as the learners are also provided space and

time to perform the reading with and against literary

text which is required by the dimensions of Critical

Literature Pedagogy. However, not all levels of

students are able to perform the competence since

the objectives of the classrooms are different.

The findings also have proved that providing

the learners’ engagement toward literature becomes

an important element in the teaching of Literature in

any kind of setting. Besides learners’ reading

exposure, the learners’ sociocultural background,

gender, or enjoyment towards reading the literary

text can become crucial elements in the learners’

engagement with the literary text. Paran (2008) says

that the contribution of literature in foreign language

learning is not only influenced by the role of the

teacher but also the role of the task and the role of

the reader. He also says that learners who have been

exposed to positive experiences with literature, and

who are given the opportunity to read literature and

respond to it, both benefit linguistically and enjoy

the experience. Additionally, this paper suggests the

curriculum developer of Literature classrooms

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especially in a foreign language setting can apply

Critical Literature Pedagogy to increase students’

power and identity in engaging with foreign

language literary texts. This paper also suggests that

instructors of literature classrooms especially in a

foreign language setting to be aware of the learners’

literary competence because the learners may also

link their literary competence to engage with critical

literacy and thus becomes a complete Critical

Literature Pedagogy.

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