Text, Reader & Pedagogy: A Reflection Upon Teaching English Poetry to EFL Female Students at a Saudi Arabian University

Abstract

This study is a descriptive-analytical investigation of the current approaches of teaching English poetry as a vital component of the English Department curriculum for English as a foreign language (EFL) female students at Faculty of Languages and Translation (FLT), King Khalid University (KKU). It aims at identifying teaching methodologies adopted to teach poetry and demonstrates learners’ responses towards these practices. The study was conducted at the English Department of the female campus during the academic year 2018-2019 (1439-1440 H). Forty students who studied poetry (Eng-430) in first and second semester participated in the study. The study adopts a qualitative methodology with the questionnaire as the primary tool to collect data and descriptive analysis as a method to interpret data. The study finds out that most of the teaching methodologies practiced in teaching poetry are traditional teacher-centered. It view poetry subject as a type of “knowledge” where teachers are mediators to impart information about poets and poems, and the students are passive recipients for information without interactive, critical, creative and evaluative abilities. Resultantly, students’ involvement in the class, interest in the subject, and comprehension of the genre are affected. The study finds the effectiveness of an interactive multimodal pedagogical model of interacting reader-centered educational tools and literary theories to promote language and literary competence, critical thinking, knowledge-cum-creativity in poetry classroom. The suggested methodology would help to provide a motivating medium for English language and literature learning as per the requirements of quality modern education.