PRE-SERVICE EFL TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE USE OF LITERATURE IN PRACTICE TEACHING

The present study aims to investigate the attitudes of teacher candidates at an English Language Teaching (ELT) program of Çukurova University in Turkey about the use of literature during practice teaching. Through a 13-item questionnaire prepared by the researchers, they gathered the beliefs and attitudes of 137 senior student teachers enrolled at this ELT program. Categorized and thus analysed under four main sections, the questionnaire consisted of a mix of open-ended and close-ended questions. The findings suggest pre-service teachers’ positive attitude towards using literature in practice teaching by including the literary texts into their classes since they state that literature is useful for language teaching/learning, personal development, and literary appreciation of the students. However, the same pre-service teachers also admit that they cannot easily use literary texts because they are in doubt about either self-efficacy on teaching and/or their students’ linguistic capability in the target language for processing literary texts. In addition, they highlight the fact that there are some limitations imposed upon by the practicum schools or by the framework of the practicum program of the university. In conclusion, the present study has some important implications for teacher training institutions in terms of the use of literature in ELT