An Investigation into EFL Students’ Difficulties in Understanding and Interpreting Literary Texts: Case study of Second year EFL Students at Ibn Khaldoun University

Abstract

One of the important skills that EFL students should work on is reading because it plays an important role in the educational system as well as in communication. Many second or foreign language learners have regarded reading as the most important skill (Grabe, 2002). The search for a model or process which could suitably account for more effective and efficient reading comprehension, and appreciation of text for EFL learners has been a controversial and challenging concern among many EFL theorists and researchers as well as practitioners (Carrell, 1988; Smith, 1982). This paper attempts to shed some light on the frequent problems that university students meet while reading the literary texts introduced by their teachers as the latter aim to widen their horizons and to introduce them to new cultures. The results revealed that a large number of students have problems in understanding and interpreting literary texts such as understanding the relationship between the writer/poet, period of the text, and the theme/s of the literary work; finding out and interpreting figures of speech; difficulties in suggesting a rich variety of classroom implications in relation with using literature in teaching English; and finally the pronunciation and intonation difficulties.