The teaching of literature to less proficient students in rural secondary schools in Kelantan / Radzuwan Ab. Rashid

This study aims to identify the approaches and strategies employed by teachers in
teaching the literature component to less proficient students in selected secondary
schools in Kelantan, Malaysia. A total of 120 teachers and 240 students from 20 rural
schools participated in this research. The approaches and strategies used by teachers
in the literature lessons were identified while the reasons to why the teachers
employed the approaches and strategies were explicated. Students' feedback on the
approaches and strategies employed were also acknowledged. Data from
questionnaires, classroom observations and semi-structured interviews were
triangulated to form the findings for this study. Findings showed that the informationbased
approach (24%) is the most frequently employed by teachers, followed by
moral-philosophical approach (23%) and paraphrastic approach (20%). This seems to
reflect the findings of classroom observations whereby all the teachers exhibited the
use of similar teaching approaches. The findings indicate that the tendency of using
teaching approach is influenced by the students' low level of language proficiency
which results in teachers providing answers and facts to them. Apart from that,
teachers were frequently observed to be using Bahasa Malaysia as a medium of
instruction. The implication is that literature teaching with the aims of developing
students' language and thinking skills and generating students' personal response and
appreciation may not be successfully achieved.