Beyond the literary analysis essay : a scrutiny of EFL students' performance, errors and challenges

Abstract EN

The present study attempts to investigate the difficulties students face while writing a literary analysis.

The investigation is threefold; first, an evaluation of students' performance is carried out through an analysis of essay papers.

Then, in order to gain more insight into how the students, themselves, view their performance in literature; qualitative attitude questionnaires were administered to 120 EFL students enrolled in the English department.

At the third level, open-ended questionnaires were distributed to literature teachers in order to reveal their perspectives about the pedagogical challenges in relation to literature teaching in general and literary essay writing in particular.

The investigation findings confirm the students' low attainment in literary analysis essays.

The results display a disillusioning divergence between the pedagogical expectations and the actual achievements.

Moving beyond a simple reading or a recommended interpretation to sound reasoning and an in-depth analytical performance seems to be extremely strenuous for students.