The Use of Ideological Becoming in English Literature as a Means to Stimulate Students’ Readiness to Speak

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between ideological becoming and students’ readiness to speak using English Literature. Learning literature can be daunting and intimidating for students. Moreover, some view the incorporation of literature in language learning is only to serve the need to impart culture and aesthetic values in students without significantly contributing to the aims of teaching and learning and students’ communicative competence. In addition, some instructors find literature to be complex, thus unsuitable to be adopted in the language learning syllabus. During language learning, speaking poses the most challenging skill to master as the students have reservations and experience anxiety in expressing themselves freely and openly in sharing their thoughts. In order to promote speaking skill among the students in a literature classroom, they need to be engaged actively with activities that would facilitate and accelerate their motivation to speak. With this in view, the researcher finds Bakhtin’s notion on ideological becoming may help students to be more expressive in sharing their views during lessons. Ideological becoming is a process of learning by positioning one’s voice with other voices. Through this process, students are required to get their voices heard and recognized while interacting with others. Thus, this article aims to review the following, first, how is literature used in class to promote speaking skill, and second, how the notion of ideological becoming can be a useful tool in learning literature. The state of ideological becoming brings positive implication for the teaching of literature as students are encouraged to be critical and assertive in defending and justifying their responses toward any literary texts.