An Exploration of the Main Difficulties and Challenges in Teaching EFL Literature: The case of Teachers at the University of Tlemcen, Algeria

ABSTRACT Despite the boundless benefit of teaching literature and the joy that may grow out of its learning, putting an EFL literature course into practice is not always without constraints and challenges. Covering the whole of these challenges and constraints seems to be beyond the reach; nevertheless, the specificities of teaching literature necessitates the examination of the recurrent issues and challenges that teachers are very likely to face particularly in an EFL context. Though these issues can, by extension, exist in many EFL settings, within the present paper, they will be discussed with a particular reference to the learning and teaching situation at the Department of English at the University of Tlemcen, Algeria. It is also worth noting that examining such intricacies basically stems from the belief that teachers, though most often times are aware of many of them, do little to cope with them on the ground. Thus, the objective of the present paper is not only to list and/or simply enumerate those constraints and challenges, but it is rather to invite teachers to soundly reflect on the implications they carry. Stated differently, highlighting the obstacles in using literature in the classroom is ideally meant to serve a point of departure for a reflective orientation of the pedagogical practice.