Why Is It Difficult To Teach And Understand Modern English Literature?

Abstract

The paper is aimed at stating some general and special problems encountered by Russian university teachers and students of modern English literature. General problems include reading crisis, lack of time, motivation and background knowledge, while special difficulties consist in misunderstanding language and cultural situation peculiarities described in modern English fiction. It is argued in the paper that the majority of the revealed problems are conditioned by cultural barriers, different mentality, value systems and stereotypes. The hypothesis has been proved that integral discourse approach to literature teaching and learning in general and modern English literature in particular is considered to be the most productive way in acquiring language and cultural professional competence. Teaching modern English literature course alongside with teaching and analyzing language and cultural peculiarities of English speaking countries, using available for students and teachers commentaries to the modern English novels, writing detailed commentaries to the books recommended for reading and discussing are understood by the author as effective means to minimize misunderstanding of authentic literary discourse. Examples from the novels Nice Work by David Lodge and White Teeth by Zadie Smith are given to implement the integral discourse approach for understanding English literary discourse through understanding peculiarities of national and cultural identity of the characters.

Keywords: English literaturelanguage and cultural situationcultural barriersmisunderstandingstereotypes

Introduction

The paper is an attempt at summing up some of the major problems encountered by many Russian EFL university students and teachers while reading and discussing books by modern English writers. Chelyabinsk State University has been an active participant in the project Oxford-Russia for teachers of English from Russian universities. The project concentrates on teaching modern English literature, free ordering and shipping of the necessary amount of copies of 24 modern novels to participating universities, writing commentaries with annotations with students after the novels discussions, correcting students’ essays on the novels they are reading, taking part in the annual September international seminar “Contemporary English Literature in Russian Universities” in Perm State University organized by professors Karen Hewitt, an Oxford university scholar “who bridges English and Russian cultures” (Sidorova, 2017, p. 927) and Boris Mikhailovich Proskurnin, the dean of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures faculty of Perm State University, in extremely popular May seminars for English teachers from Russia in Oxford, meeting British writers and editors and many other teachers and students involving activities. There is a tough competition among Chelyabinsk teachers to be chosen as the seminar participants and use its results in class discourse teaching.

The project is a great success among about 100 Russian universities because it helps overcome cultural difficulties and misunderstanding in literature teaching and learning. One of the benefits of the project is a free access to the books by modern British writers available for groups of linguistics and foreign philology students. One more benefit of the project is the possibility of writing commentaries with students on the novels that will be summed up and published in order to clarify ambiguous parts of the books. There is an annual journal Footpath published in Perm State University with the mixed British-Russian editorial board in which teachers and even students can share their opinions on the books.

Problem Statement

Foreign literature studies at universities have attracted attention of many Russian and foreign researchers. Bloemert, Paran, Jansen, and van de Grift (2017) view students’ perspective on the benefits of EFL literature education, Calafato and Paran study how age factor influences attitudes of EFL teachers towards literature in language education (Calafato & Paran, 2019). Duncan and Paran (2017) prove the effectiveness of literature on acquisition of language skills and intercultural understanding in the high school context. Ibragimova, Kadyrova, and Kharitonov (2017) show that using fiction develops intercultural competence in teaching foreign languages. Işıklı and Tarakçıoğlu (2017) investigate problems of English literature teaching to EFL high school students in Turkey.

The importance of literary texts in teaching students whose majors are not foreign languages and literature are analyzed by Belkina and Stetsenko (2015), while Vasilenko and Sidorenko (2016) discuss the usage of fiction texts in teaching English to students of linguistics. Methodological ways of generating interest for reading are discussed by Belkova and Chubak (2016). The conference was held in Ekaterinburg (Zarubezhnaya literatura…, 2010) to discuss innovations, methodology, problems of teaching and learning on studying foreign literature at a higher educational institution. We agree with Calafato (2018) that “in Russia literature has a storied history of use, although relatively few empirical studies exist on contemporary teacher practices and how these have evolved in the post-Soviet era” (p. 91).

However, there are still numerous problems in teaching and understanding English literature to be analyzed and discussed.

The hypothesis of the paper is that an integral analysis of authentic literary texts can help students overcome cultural difficulties and minimize misunderstanding caused by the difference in cultures, mentality and in value systems.

Research Questions

General and special problems of teaching and learning modern English literature at Russian universities should be stated in order to find out the most productive way in acquiring language and cultural professional competence.

Integral approach to modern English literature studies is supposed to be useful to minimize cultural barriers. This approach presupposes parallel teaching of the intercultural communication and English literature courses for students whose major is foreign literature.

Purpose of the Study

The paper is aimed at stating some general and special problems encountered by Russian university teachers and students of modern English literature. To minimize difficulties in teaching and understanding modern English literature for foreign philology university students the advantage of the integral discourse approach to literature teaching and learning in general and modern English literature in particular are viewed.

Research Methods

The use of authentic literary texts requires appropriate teaching techniques and methodology. This study is an integral text and cross-cultural approach to analyze students’ perception of authentic literary text. Khomutova and Parulina (2016) argue that “from the integral perspective, a literary text is an integral dispersed object, a unity of four fragments: a fragment of knowledge, a fragment of national culture, a fragment of language and a fragment of social space which are verbalized in their global interrelation and interconnection” (p. 8018). The authors have applied this approach to the study of a university novel in the literature classroom with students who major in linguistics. They have successfully analyzed lexical, syntactic, pragmatic, topical and culturally conditioned stylistic exponents of characters' discourse in the course of literature studies of the university novel “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt.

Comparative language and cultural analysis has been applied to outline similarities and differences of the problems discussed in the novels and in Russian language and cultural situation in general. The target of the interview questions is to gather information about: (1) the students’ response to the integral approach in literature studies; (2) the problems encountered in English literature teaching and learning.

Data collection consists in the 8 teachers’ and 30 students’ interviews on modern English literature teaching followed by classroom observation. Contemporary English novels are read by students in class and as a part of extensive home reading tasks. All the interviewed teachers and students from Chelyabinsk State University agreed that integral text approach to teaching and learning was highly effective, took a lot of effort, was very time consuming but rewarding. Interviews study has simplified the process of summing up general and special problems of understanding modern English literature.

Results of the study are supposed to help understand the difficulties encountered by English teachers and students when teaching and learning English literature. In the editorial article of Footpath “On the Literary Dangers of Searching for Russians”, Karen Hewitt has justly pointed out: “I am suggesting that the best way of dealing with confusions about a different culture is to identify how to read each novel. Each reader asks himself or herself: What is the author trying to tell me? How do I know? In each case the answers will be different and will require careful reading and searching in the text, but the process of finding out is itself a guide to the attitudes of the author. It protects us from seeing everything that happens as somehow typical of “the English” or “the British”, just as finding out how to read “The Kreutzer Sonata” helps us to understand Tolstoy and distinguish his story from “typical Russian attitudes” (Hewitt, 2014, p. 9).

Integral text teaching approach avoids simplification and stereotypes in understanding language and cultural diversity, teaches creative thinking interpretation and writing. We argue that integral literary text teaching approach should be enjoyable not boring.

Findings

Understanding English literature problems can be divided into general, not conditioned by cultural and language differences, and special, caused by numerous national and cultural peculiarities of the foreign language and cultural space, differences in value systems and mentality.

Conclusion

The analysis of the material has shown that the integral approach to modern English literature is effective due to several reasons:

• It minimizes difficulties in understanding modern English literature;

• It develops empathy, perception of the plot and themes of the authentic fiction through cultural context;

• It leads to creative approach to language learning in general and to understand modern authentic English literature in particular.

References

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