Attitudes of Language Teachers towards Using Literature in Language Classrooms

Abstract

This study aims to identify the attitudes of language teachers towards using literature in their classrooms. With this aim, an attitude scale consisting of 15 items was designed and applied in the west coast of Turkey. 30 teachers participated in this study. 22 of them are female and 8 of them are male. The collected data were analyzed through SPSS program and with the aim of analyzing participants’ general attitudes towards teaching literature in the classrooms, One Way Sample T-Test was exploited. Related to this, mean value of each question was run by Descriptive Statistics-Overall Means. Subsequently, the effects of the participants’ teaching experience and gender on their attitudes towards using literature were examined by Independent Samples T-Tests. According to the results, those teachers have positive attitudes towards using literature. Also, there is not a statistically significant difference in teachers’ attitudes towards using literature in terms of their gender and teaching experience. Finally, the study shows that teachers like using short stories, poems and plays in their classrooms. As for the methodological implications, to make investigation more deeply and findings more precise, the number of questions might be increased. Moreover, the questionnaire might be applied to more teachers, so the validity of the research would have been increased.