Indonesian High School Teachers’ Approaches in Teaching Literature in English

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to discuss approaches used by Indonesian English teachers in teaching literary texts in high schools. This study was conducted during one of several community engagement sessions in which the writers acted as co-organizer and invited speakers. This activity is aimed at improving teachers’ knowledge about literature subject, which includes poem, song and proverb and how to teach it. These texts are compulsory texts for students taking English as their minor. The inclusion of literature itself into the teaching of English in high school is mandated by the newly implemented curriculum dubbed as Curriculum 2013. The population of this study was 40 English teachers who are members of English Teacher Forum Chapter Agam Regency, West Sumatera, Indonesia. A total of 23 teachers responded to the questionnaire which was administered online. A questionnaire adapted from Rashid, Vethamani and Abdul Rahman [10] and Mustakim, Mustapha and Lebar [9]was employed to collect the data. The results show that teachers employ language-based approach, paraphrastic approach, information-based approach, personal-response approach, moral philosophical approach and stylistic-approach. It was also revealed that language-based approach was the most popular approach used by teachers, followed by moral-philosophical approach and information-based approach respectively. The least popular approaches were paraphrastic and stylistic approach.