Exploring new territories in pedagogical stylistics: An investigation of high-school EFL students’ assessments

• Published in: Language and literature (Harlow, England) Vol. 26; no. 4; pp. 300 - 322
• Main Authors: Viana, Vander, Zyngier, Sonia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.11.2017; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Adolescents; English as a second language instruction; English as a second language teaching methods; Iconicity; Pedagogy; Second language teachers; Secondary education; Stylistics; Tree structures; high school; pedagogical stylistics; student appraisal; English as a foreign language; critical pedagogy; literary awareness; English language teaching and learning; empirical approach
• ISSN: 0963-9470; 1461-7293
• DOI: 10.1177/0963947017718997

The growing number of recent publications on pedagogical stylistics indicates that this area is still of much interest to those who invest in the integration of language and literature. However, evidence-based assessments of pedagogical stylistics are still few and depend mostly on teachers’ intuitions. The present study contributes towards filling this gap by examining 28 reflective accounts produced by high-school English as a foreign language (EFL) teenagers who participated in a literary awareness workshop on iconicity. Branching out from pedagogical stylistics, literary awareness is here described as a program which aims at sensitizing students to verbal artistry. The bottom-up analysis of the participants’ accounts reveals five main aspects – “applicability,” “learning,” “materials,” “students” and “teaching” – and indicates that the workshop was to a certain degree transformative. Instead of an instrumental approach to language learning, the workshop aimed mostly at consciousness-raising. Students’ assessment of the workshop was quite positive, and they linked in-class experience with their lives outside the school. The results indicate that, besides learning a foreign language, the process of reflection has led students beyond the text. We conclude by discussing the implications of the workshop for both pedagogy and research.