Teachers’ Perspective Toward Literature Circle to Elevate EFL Students’ Reading Motivation

Abstract

Previous literature in the EFL context has reported that lack of learning motivation may cause a decrease in students' reading comprehension skills. Therefore, the literature circle is believed to be capable of elevating their motivation towards reading English texts. This article seeks to capture Indonesian English teachers' perspectives towards the literature circle in teaching narrative text for junior high school students, which is still understudied. Employing a descriptive study, this paper elaborates on the teacher of ninth grade in junior high school by using an interview technique, document analysis, and observation. The findings show that there are some progress in teaching-learning and some challenges that have to be faced by the teacher to be more creative in teaching-learning especially in reading by using the literature circle. To conclude, this method leads the teacher to seek their path to face the challenges in teaching reading. This study suggests the teacher be more creative and seek the appropriate step arrangement of implementing the literature circle in junior high school level.

Students’ Engagement in Reading Through Literature Circle

“…In literature circles, members read the same story or book (or are required to do so), take notes to summarize the material, and then get together frequently to discuss their interpretations of what they have read [22]. This activity can be simply described as reading clubs or groups where students select their reading material from a variety of genres (such as books, articles, and poems) and text types [5]. Literature circles are learner-cantered teaching methods that incorporate collaborative learning and independent reading, which must be included in current teaching concepts [19].…”