Why literature is not popular among students
Why literature is not popular among students
By A. Chaedar Alwasilah
BANDUNG (JP): Literature is simply defined as a collection of
the best writings. How good is the best? It is judged using a set
of criteria accepted by the literary community. Members of this
community share commonality, expectations, and values inherent in
literary works.
All of these constitute a convention established throughout a
nation's civilization and is passed on through education. People
appreciate literature as part of being educated and civilized.
People ignorant of their own culture's literature, let alone
world literature, are considered less educated and less cultured.
Literature, by universal standards, is important enough to be
included in school curricula. It is not because it embodies the
best of writing, but most importantly it represents cultures.
Education begins with knowing one's own culture and gradually
understanding others.
This is how literature develops in students' multicultural
perspectives and cross-cultural understandings. By reading
literary works, students share the problems, concerns, values,
and issues common to all human beings. In other words, literature
offers universal values and thus makes students more human.
In my observations, the objectives of teaching literature as
discussed above are still a far cry from reality. A 1999 survey
involving 100 college freshmen representing high schools
throughout West Java and its vicinity was conducted to reveal how
literature and Bahasa Indonesia are taught in schools. In its
conclusion, the study suggests that literature is not popular
among teachers and students. It is not frequently taught, and in
most cases when it is, it is not properly taught at all. But lets
take a closer look at the survey's conclusion:
Firstly, compared time-wise with vocabulary and grammar,
literature gets less. However, it does not suggest that
vocabulary and grammar are better taught than literature.
As Table 1 and Table 2 show, grammar and vocabulary seem to be
over-taught; therefore, they become boring and unproductive. When
teaching listening and reading comprehension, teachers dominate
the class by reviewing vocabulary and grammatical rules.
Traditionally, students are made to memorize the rules and to
create sentences using the vocabulary under discussion.
Secondly, students are not well acquainted with literary
works. Surprisingly, less than half of the respondents (48.4
percent) reported they were advised to read novels or short
stories, while 34.4 percent of them were not recommended anything
at all. As to the number of teacher-recommended novels or short
stories, you will be surprised to see Table 3.
Thirdly, apparently listening and reading comprehension
dominate the teaching sessions. As depicted in Table 4, listening
comprehension dominates all the other language skills, suggesting
the teachers dominate the class, thus leaving the students
inactive and unchallenged. Despite its ample sessions, apparently
reading is overused in teach vocabulary and grammar on the
pretext of understanding the reading passages.
Fourthly, consistent with the principle of the psychology of
learning, the teaching material should be selected to arouse
students' interest. Student-selected materials in most cases are
better received rather than teacher-selected ones. In Table 5,
you will see that what is most taught in the class is not
necessarily what is most well received by the students.
As the table indicates, in students' perceptions short stories
seem to be the easiest genre for some reason. They are easily
obtainable, do not cost much and students can often finish one at
one sitting. Most newspapers carry a short story in their Sunday
editions. Short stories create a single impression. Each word
contributes to the planned effect. In many aspects, short stories
are more familiar to students. This being the case, they require
less concentration on the part of students than poems do.
For the students, poems are the most difficult genre to learn;
likewise, for teachers, they are the most difficult to teach.
Poems are the most highly emotive form of expression and exploit
the sounds of words in a systematic way.
Using rhythm, rhyme and other sound effects to heighten and
intensify expression, poems require more concentration on the
part of students than short stories do. However, it would be
entirely wrong to assume that poems are by definition the most
important literary genre to teach, as much as to assume that
short stories are the least important genre to teach.
From what I have discussed, some instructional suggestions
follow:
* To teach literature correctly is not synonymous with increasing
the hours for teaching literature or Bahasa Indonesia. Literary
works could be used as triggering materials for teaching all
components and skills of language.
* Literature should be taught following the principle of easy-to-difficult
and simple-to-complicated. Familiar genres should take precedence
over unfamiliar ones.
* Literature is a form of expression; accordingly, students are
to be encouraged to create their own poems and fiction and to
share them with their peers and teachers.
* Literature is better instructed through reading-responding
techniques, whereby students are encouraged to produce written
responses to the works. By so doing, they will unbelievingly
become young writers themselves.
* Writing constitutes the most difficult language skill to
acquire. Research shows that reading literary works, rather than
grammatical explanation, improves students' performance in
writing.
Through literature, students explore the best in writing
across cultures, and in so doing, they are facilitated to learn
to think, speak and write more effectively and creatively.
The writer is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Universitas
Pendidikan Indonesia in Bandung, West Java.
Table 1
Language components most presented in the class
Language component Percentage of respondents
----------------------------------------------
Vocabulary (54.8%)
Grammar (52.7%)
Literature (34.4%)
Table 2
Perceived lack of interest in studying language components
Language component Percentage of respondents
----------------------------------------------
Grammar 35.5%
Vocabulary 31.2%
Literature 23.6%
Table 3
Reported numbers of recommended novels or short stories read
throughout high school years
Number of novels/short stories read Percentage of respondents
---------------------------------------------------------------
0-5 34.4.%
None 18.3%
6-10 15.1%
more than 20 12.9%
Table 4
Language skills most taught in high schools
Language skills Percentage of respondents
-------------------------------------------
Listening 62.4%
Reading 49.5%
Writing 43.1%
Speaking 19.3%
Table 5
Perceived difficulty of learning literary genres most taught in
high schools
Literary genre Most taught Most difficult to learn
------------------------------------------------------
Poem 68.8% 63.4%
Short story 36.5% 7.5%
Drama 29.0% 21.5%
Novel 23.6% 20.4%