Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities Investigation of Kurdish Students’ Perceptions of Using Literature as Main Material in the EFL Speaking Course

This study aims to find out the nature of the methods that are applied for teaching literature in English departments of the Colleges of Education, Basic Education and Languages at Salahaddin University for the academic year 2019-2020. It also aims to evaluate the considerable teaching techniques and the students’ styles of copying with them and investigating about the positive influence of the applied teaching methods to promote the learners’ speaking skill. The last aim is to find out the learners’ perceptions concerning the procedures that are applied in the class to conduct the tasks and the activities so as to enhance their speaking skill. To conduct the study the three tools (questionnaire for students, oral test for the students and and take part in this study. The results reveal that the methods that are applied in teaching literature are effective and develop the learners’ speaking skills and the majority of the learners have positive attitudes towards learning literature and its methods of teaching. Also The results show that the methods that are applied in literature are varied since most of the instructors do not follow a specific standard method of teaching literature instead they use mixed methods in their classes.

Section One: Introduction

Statement of the Problem
Teaching literature is one of the most important subjects that are taught for the learners of English language departments. Literature instructors are encountering some challenges concerning the suitability of the teaching methods that are used in their classes since there are differences between Kurdish and English cultures.
Traditional methods are used in teaching English literature and the way of teaching English literature is either through lecturing students or presenting details about the author or the elements of the literary work such as character, themes, plot, and setting. The traditional methods do not allow the instructors take into their considerations the students' educational experiences or to improve their abilities.
Thus, students have problem with linguistic needs because they are asked to memorize and repeat information. So, learners will lack the opportunities to practice the language of the literary texts in the class, and to communicate with each other effectively. Most of the instructors think that literature is the goal behind teaching literature instead of adopting it as a means for teaching EFL (English as a Foreign Language). They have some shortcoming about deciding the aims for teaching literature in their classes. Speaking is an important activity in teaching literature since it affects the whole students' linguistic proficiency and assists them to recall the grammatical structures and vocabulary that have already comprehended through English language learning process.

Aims of the Study
The current study attempts to achieve the following aims: 1.Finding out the nature of the methods that are applied for teaching literature in English departments in the colleges of Education, Basic education and Languages 2. Evaluating the considerable teaching techniques and the students' styles of copying with them.
3. Investigating the positive influence of the applied teaching methods to promote the learners' speaking skills. 4. Finding out the learners' perceptions concerning the procedures that are applied in the class to conduct the tasks and the activities so as to enhance their speaking skill.

Hypotheses of the Study
Based on the above aims the following hypotheses are proposed: 1. It is hypothesized that the methods that are applied in teaching literature have lacked since they depend on traditional method for teaching literature and ignoring the standard approaches for teaching literature.
2. The teaching methods that are applied for teaching literature may not be effective enough to improve the learners' speaking skills.
3. The learners in English language departments face certain lacks and difficulties to develop their speaking skill through learning literary works.
4. There is no correlation between the aims for teaching literature and the output of the students since the instructors focus on the content of the literary works more than developing the students' speaking skill.

Limits of the study
The study is limited to second, third, and fourth level students who study literature from all English departments at Salahaddin University for the academic year 2019-2020.

Definitions of Basic Terms
1.5.1: literature: (Long,1909:8) defines literature as " the expression of life in words of truth and beauty; it is the written record of man's spirit, of his thoughts, emotions, aspirations; it is the history, and the only history, of the human soul". Iwai (2011:150) defines that EFL refers to those who learn English in non-English speaking countries.

Speaking skill:
Widdowson (1994:59) defines speaking as "the active production skill and use of oral production and it is the capacity of someone to communicate orally with others". Section Two: Theoretical Background 2.1 Teaching Literature Collie and Slater (1987:6) discuss that the purpose of teaching literature is to pave the way for the learners to gain the benefits of communicative activities which are suitable for language improvement within the context of suitable works of literature, and through connecting literature with students such communicative benefits can be gained. Literature is viewed by Hall (2005:47) as a subject that is used under the traditional approaches, using traditional approach in teaching literature means that the learner has already acquired a degree of language ability and helps the learner to express their ideas through learning literature. In addition literature can be taught as a main resource under communicative approaches which learners are involved in real communication, they use their natural ways and strategies to acquire the language and this will help them to learn how to use the language.
By the same token Carter and Long (1991:126) believe that in language teaching classes literature has a significant role and it can be utilized as a best tool to encourage and advance the process of teaching and learning. Teaching literary works can also provide an important chance for the learners to attempt by themselves to communicate actively. The first important step in motivating learners and making them participate in classroom discussion is that they should have something important to discuss and present different ideas about it in the class so in order to create a communicative atmosphere. This situation encourages learners to share multiple views and insights that lead to develop their speaking skill. Learners cannot make conversations in a vacuum and most of the times the information within the content of situational dialogues is not enough to encourage them to the difficult task of making new sentences; therefore, it is necessary to provide learners with suitable information and suitable atmosphere for conversation (Hill, 1994:179).
Teaching and literature are both regarded as bases which organize, enforce and enrich the social and economic relationships; therefore the pedagogical task is to let the learners to consider those relations; to consider what are the political, social, and economic contexts of literature. Moreover, it leads to think about the position of literary teaching itself; and to take into account the uses of literature and its teaching (Myrsiades & Myrsiades, 1994:64) Teaching literature not only meets the social and political history of nations and countries, and it is not dissociated from other related aspects of language study, particularly the teaching of speaking, reading, writing, listening, and the teaching of culture. Literature also is regarded as an opportunity to improve the vocabulary, reading strategies and reasoning skills and it is not separated from other kinds of discourse. Similar pedagogical methods can also be used for literature to improve the language skills (Kramsch & Kramsch, 2000:553). Chenfeld (1978:211) shows the importance of literature by maintaining that literature provides learners with important aspects about themselves and life. It enriches individual and social insights. In this respect, people in general and learners in particular need literature to enrich their lives. In addition, it will provide a source of pleasure, comfort, and wisdom; furthermore, through literature people can discover what is feasible in human experience and imagination.
Teaching literature is a significant factor in making a strong relationship between the learner and the literary work on one side, and between the learner and the language on the other side. Moreover, literature takes up an important part of the language-learning programme, since it gives learners with the capacity to overcome the basic activities. It can also make an imaginative world and produce a happy life that pushes the learner to discuss and interact with the writer of the literary work (widdowson, 1975:86).

Arguments for the Use of Literature in Language Teaching
The proponents of literature in language teaching acknowledge that literature has a valid role in ELT process for its academic, cultural, intellectual, linguistic and motivational fields. Mckay (1982:531) asserts that adopting literature in language teaching process is important for progressing learners' linguistic knowledge in the field of usage and use in a way the learners can get pleasure and enjoy studying literature. This will motivate them to communicate and interact with a text, and then it will increase their reading proficiency. It also enables the learners to understand foreign culture and may encourage their own creation of imaginative literary work. The author has listed three major benefits of using literature because it helps learners to become creative, motivates them towards personal and dynamic learning. It also fosters learners' reading skill.
Another important point of teaching literature is that it makes learners to be involved in the culture of the society that is different from their own. This brings some difficulty, because the relation between literature and culture to an extent is not simple, since there are few numbers of literary genres that could represent pure factual events that rooted in their society. Some other genres of literature do not represent reality but they represent imagination. For instance most of the time poetry is considered as an example of literary genres that has an indirect link with the real world, because it shows writer's emotions and feelings (Widdowson,1984:149).
Using literature in ELT has four main reasons as Collie and Slater (1987:6) state that using literature by instructors in ELT classrooms provides students with invaluable authentic materials, cultural and language enrichment, and personal involvement. Moreover literature in ELT has a great impact on teaching the four main language skills LSRW ( Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing), additionally to other language areas such as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Through literature, students will grow intellectually and will be exposed to a wider variety of books, which can stimulate more free reading. In fact, literature program is considered to be effective if it results in pushing learners for more free voluntary reading. In turn, free voluntary reading will help building language competence and contribute to intellectual growth, which will make literature more comprehensible and meaningful (Krashen, 2004:150). Lazar (1993:19) affirms that the integration of literature into language teaching, displays its power in educating the whole person. In the educational field and in the classroom literature plays an important role in expanding the imagination of the learners, to improve their critical abilities and to grow their emotional consciousness. In case of asking learners to respond personally to the literary work, they will express their own ideas, emotions and thoughts in English confidently. In the end, they will find out that they are empowered by their capacity to deal with the literary text and its language, furthermore to connect it to the values and traditions that are familiar in their own society. Literary language is somehow different from other forms of discourse in that it breaks the more usual rules of syntax, collocation and even cohesion. Moody (1971:1) views literature as an" 'umbrella' term which covers a number of different kinds of activity." Literature provides learners with a personal response if learners are prepared with the interest, skills, self-trusting, understanding, and desire to do so. At that time learners will have the capacity to create a personal response to literature, this personal response capacity is not innate but it should be nurtured. It needs a graded method where instructors are certain about the learners' understanding the text first, after the learner has answered and required several questions concerning the meaning at different level-word, sentence, paragraph and after they have finished written exercises, have been helped where needed and have worked autonomously of the teacher or alone with a friend and with a group of learners then learners' personal response to literature will be created (Pachler, 1999:211). Lee (1970:1) confirms that in literature resources of the language are most fully and skillfully used. Literature should enter into the language study of those who are going to use the language with the greatest possible skill and effect.
Meanwhile, receptive vocabulary can be motivated as Collie and Slater (1987:5) claim that literature supports learners to enrich their receptive vocabulary, and also it provides learners with a rich source of syntactical, lexical, and phonological items .Aside from these, it improves the learners capacity to make deduction from linguistic information and to get meaning from context, and it has a great impact on improving learners four skills especially speaking.

Some Main Approaches of Teaching Literature
Different models and approaches have been proposed by different authors that teachers of literature may use in teaching literary texts. Carter and Long (1991:1) have suggested three models for teaching literature which are: (1) the cultural approach (2) the language based approach and (3) the personal growth approach. In the same respect, Lazar (1993:23) introduces three possible and useful approaches for teaching literature these approaches are: (1) language-based approach (2) Literature as a content (3) Literature for personal enrichment. It is worth mentioning that the approaches that are proposed by Lazar and those that are proposed by Carter and Long in some ways are similar to each other. Rosli also in (1995:65) identifies another approach that is paraphrastic approach. Brief discussion for each approach is presented in the following.

The Cultural Approach:
This Approach represents traditional approach to literature teaching. It is a teacher-centered approach where the instructor gives the students lectures with the social, historical, and political background information of the literary texts. In this approach, the focus is on historical movements of literature, the varieties of genres and biographical facts relate to authors. Applying this approach in teaching literature will raise the students' cultural awareness and raises their appreciation of other universal beliefs that are different from their own. In this sense, cultural model is considered as an important way for bridging cultures and progressing a feel of understanding and tolerance towards the otherness (Carter and Long, 1991:1).
This model is related to literature as a Content -Approach proposed by Lazar (1993:24). Content approach is considered as the most traditional one, and it mostly used in third-level or post-secondary education. In this approach literature is regarded as the content of the course which includes history and properties of literary movements: the political, historical, social background to a text and genres of literature. Learners can learn English by paying attention to course content, especially through reading texts and literary criticism refereeing to them. in addition, in this approach, learners are allowed to use their mother tongue to discuss literary texts or they probably require translating texts from one language into another. The activities that are used in this approach are; lectures, explanations, note reading, and criticism that are written in the textbooks or given by the instructor.

The Language-Based Approach:
It is known as a student -centered approach and the main focus is on studying the language of the literary text. It is used to provide examples about the specific types of linguistic features, for instance literal and figurative language.
This approach provides learners to the bits of language and different creative uses of language. Another reason for using this approach is to raise students' language skills. Instructors may use the literary text to organize and prepare a variety of vocabulary and grammar activities, which give students the chance to improve and enrich their language input. This Approach also creates frequent use of stylistic clarification of the text to help learners to construct meanings and to be competent readers (Carter and Long, 1991:1).

Similarities can be seen between this approach and Language-Based
Approach proposed by Lazar (1993:23). Both of them point out that literature will support to incorporate language and literature syllabuses more closely. Elaborated analysis of the language of literature will assist learners to make an important clarifications or instructed evaluations of it. Concurrently, learners will add their general consciousness and understanding of English. They are motivated to draw on their instructions of common syntactical, lexical, or discourse accumulations to make esthetic judgments of the text. The activities that are used in this approach are prediction, cloze, ranking tasks, role-play, poetry recital, forum, debate, and discussion. These activities are helpful to provide learners a chance for using language in the classroom.

The Personal Growth Approach:
This approach stresses on the engagement of the students with literature.
Students are motivated to express their thoughts, opinions, feelings and make relationships between their own personal and cultural experiences and those written in the text. Furthermore, this model considers literature as a useful means for motivating learners to draw on their own personal feelings, experiences and beliefs.
Learners are active participants both intellectually and emotionally as they are allowed to express their ideas and thoughts. This model also concentrates on the pedagogical responsibility of the instructor in selecting the texts that meet students' interests (Carter and Long, 1991:3).
This model concentrates on learners' reactions to the authors' literary text.
Learners are allowed to discuss and present their thoughts and beliefs toward the meaning of the literary works that they study, their answers should have connection with specific texts that are discussed in the class. This approach encourages and forces learners to connect what they have studied with their personal life experiences in the class discussion (Rosli, 1995:65).
According to Lazar's Personal Enrichment Approach (1991:24), literature can be used as a useful tool for motivating learners to draw on their own emotions, experiences and ideas. It supports learners to engage in the learning process intellectually and emotionally, thus supports acquisition. It can be used as the best motivation for group work. In this approach, materials are selected on the based on whether they are suitable to learners' interest and will encourage a high level of individual engagement. Materials are mostly arranged thematically, and probably situated alongside non-literary materials that deal with similar theme. Carter and Long (1991:3) state that the personal growth approach enables the students to "achieve an engagement with the reading of literary text and helping them to grow as individuals". In other terms, the approach in question focuses on maximizing the students' personal enjoyment in reading literature. When reading a literary text, the students are actively involved with its content and then they make an active interaction because of their literary experience.

Paraphrastic Approach
Rosli (1995:65) mentions another approach, which is paraphrastic approach that highlights the surface meaning of the text. It allows instructors to use easier and simpler words and simple structure of the sentence compared to the more sophisticated one in the text, and also instructors are allowed to translate the text into other languages. The author confirms that this approach is suitable for beginners of the foreign language as it plays as a stepping-stone in elaborating original thoughts of the author's work. The activities that can be used in this approach are; teacher re-tells the story or any literary text using simpler language, the use of translation, and reading paraphrased texts or notes provided in the textbook or by the instructor.
The successfulness or failure of the proposed approaches depends on the instructor's capacity to communicate with eagerness with the learners in teaching literary works. If instructors are also willing to take part in the types of creative activities that they ask from their learners, they will not only increase their own believability in the classroom but also motivate their learners to attempt by themselves in doing literary activities and participate actively in literature lessons (Falvey & Kennedy, 1997:5).

The Sample Selection and Participants:
The sample of respondents in this study is the students of the second, third and fourth stages in English language departments at three different colleges (Basic Education, Education, and Languages) at Salahaddin University during the academic year 2019-2020. The total number of the students is 170 varied between (72) males and (98) females . The sample for the students' questionnaire includes 49 students with the age between 18-19, (95) students with the age between 20-21,(11) students with the age between 23-24 and only 1 student with the age 25.Also the sample includes 68 students from second stage, 50 from third stage and 52 students from fourth stage. See table (1). Concerning the observational checklists, the researcher attends eight full lectures of literature lessons of poetry, drama, novel, fiction, and literature survey to observe the methods and the strategies during teaching and learning process and to find out the extent of the students' and instructors' interaction and the activities that develop the speaking skill in the class. The researcher also conducts an oral test for 80 students to test their speaking skill according to a scoring rubric, which is designed for this purpose and it includes the following items (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency and accuracy).

The Application of the Instruments
The researcher has adopted three tools for conducting this study:

The Students' Questionnaire
In the current study, the researcher has selected the students' questionnaire to apply as a means for collecting data since it is considered as the most familiar method for gathering information from the participants.
The main aim of using the students' questionnaire is to know the attitude of second, third, and fourth grade undergraduate students concerning the effectiveness of methods of teaching literature on developing learners' speaking skills. The type of the questionnaire that is used in the present study is a restricted or closed-form type, which calls for ticking. The students' questionnaire contains 29 items, with a four-rated scale (always, frequently, rarely, and never) which are scored as follow; always (4), frequently (3), rarely (2), never (1).

The Classroom Observation Checklist
The

The Oral Test
The researcher has conducted the oral test by testing 80 students from three different stages (second, third, and fourth) which represents 20% of the whole society sample .The researcher has divided the selected students into three groups each of twenty students. The questions of the test are various, general and rooted in the students' daily life topics. The researcher has scored the performance of the students according to the scoring rubric that includes grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency and accuracy and allocated 10 marks for each item. The duration of the test varied between 5-10 minutes per student.

The Analysis of the Results:
By using SPSS statistical programme the following results are gained:

The Results of the Students' Questionnaire
Through the results of the students' questionnaire, the students of second, third, and fourth stages who study literature have positive attitudes and agree on certain points concerning teaching literature, these points are the following: 1. Most of the students agree that they have to learn English language to express their ideas, beliefs and emotions. In addition, they think that speaking skill is very necessary to be developed by studying literary works since they can be considered as the best ways that provide the learners with a variety of sources of authentic English language teaching materials, like asking students to narrate or summarize detailed events in the literary works.
2. The majority of the students are interested in learning English literature, because studying literature supports them to improve their English language due to its social, cultural, and religious fields. Therefore, this indicates that the literary works that are provided for English language teaching classes are suitable for their learning purposes and these texts have great effects on developing the students 'confidence in expressing their ideas and beliefs. In addition, the activities that are used by the instructors in teaching literature are effective in improving their conversational skills. The majority of the students approve that studying literary texts in English helps them appreciate the culture of different societies and help them to increase cultural awareness between different cultures. Through literary texts they learn to respect the culture of other people. Furthermore literature helps them to improve English language vocabularies that are beneficial for promoting speaking skill.
3. Most of the students rely on studying literature as a main source for enriching their language proficiency. They consider that their English language main skills can be improved after studying literature lessons and their abilities to interpret and discuss the literary texts according to their own understanding of the texts have

The Results of the Classroom Observation Checklist
According to the theoretical mean (2) and percentile weight (50%), the results of the observation checklist with its categories (methods used be teachers and activities used by instructors are analyzed.

First Domain: Methods Used by Instructors
According to the results, items (2, 14 and 15) come at the first place with the value of weighted mean (5.0000), which represents the highest weighted mean.
This indicates that all the instructors in teaching literary works clarify the content of the text to the class by using simple terms to explain what the text is about to the students and finally, they got the students to tell the events of the text. See table (3)  ,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12,13 and 16) which have received middle weighted mean between (4.120-48750), the results show that the majority of the instructors do extract information from their students concerning the literary texts and they resort to asking their students several questions to find out their students' knowledge based on what they have studied. They also give their students background information and they push and motivate their students to connect the themes of the literary texts to their personal experiences. Most of the instructors arouse students' answers to a text by pushing them to discuss and reveal their attitudes toward the matters of the text. According to the results most of the instructors give directions to the students to express ideas toward a text and most of them place language activities in literature teaching process and motivate students to be active participants in the process of understanding the meaning of the literary text. As it is observed most of the instructors generated language practice by using the text to make their students understand. So as to make sure that students understood the texts, instructors were re-telling the events of the text to students to assist them understand the literature constituent. See  The item which has received the lowest weighted mean is item 11 (2.7500).It reveals that some of the instructors allow their learners to work with their classmates in the process of understanding the literary texts. See table (5)   an end; therefore they perform variety of activities so as to make sure that their students comprehend the literary text.
2-It is revealed that most of the instructors use certain effective communicative activities such as : comprehension questions exercises, lecture sessions, read notes from workbooks with students, explain a text to students, assignment, brainstorming sessions, small group discussions, reactions towards an issue, group work, language activities-cloze, jigsaw, puzzle, prediction exercises, debate, performance activities-drama-role play-poetry recital, Re-tell story to students, students read paraphrased notes in the workbook and students re-tell story to the class.
3-These strategies and activities reflect that literature classes to a large extent are student-centered which enhanced the students' positive attitudes towards the teaching methods that are applied for teaching literature. The instructors have ignored depending on traditional methods such as grammar translation method or the structural approach and they have believed that teaching literature is not only a reading-centered task but it is a communicative task connected to the learners' culture and daily lives through developing their linguistic skills in general and speaking skill in particular. Most of the instructors apply certain techniques so as to clarify the content of the text to the class such as the learners work with their classmates in the process of understanding the meaning of texts. The instructors try to ask several questions to discover learners' knowledge based on what they have read, give students background information about the text, motivate the students to connect the themes to personal experiences, elicit students' response to a text, push students to express their feelings towards the issues of the text and direct the students to discuss their ideas about the text. Beside the majority of the instructors support the social and cultural benefits of literature for students.
4-Based on the findings of the study a considerable number of the students have shown their positive attitudes towards the methods that are applied in teaching literature. They find the literary texts that they study are helpful in developing their speaking skill and suitable for their learning purposes. The learners are also satisfied with the methods that are used in teaching literary works and with the activities that are used in literature classes. They have considered these activities effective in developing their conversational skills.