Philippine E-Journals

Learning Strategies and Literary Response: Negotiating Meaning in the Literature Classroom

Rhodora S. Ranalan

 

Abstract:

Reading is one of the most important skills for acquiring knowledge. However, it is a disturbing fact that students experience difficulties in this skill and thereby lose the pleasure of reading. The concept of learning strategies applied in the classroom, which students use in comprehending a text s meaning, is rooted in second language acquisition studies. Thus, the objective of this paper is to use such strategies in a literature classroom to find the relationship between the learning strategies and literary response and to measure the levels of use of the learning strategies and their literary response in order to determine whether or not this response differs when analyzed according to sex, program and literature subject enrolled. The findings assert that the use of learning strategy of the students is high with socio-affective strategy as the most used. The respondents have a satisfactory literary response with the female students having a higher literary response than the males. The results also show that the Education students have a higher literary response than the Liberal Arts and ABA students. Moreover, those students taking an advanced literature subject (Literature 2) have a higher literary response than those who are only on their first literature subject (Literature 1). Statistical analysis shows that there is a high correlation between learning strategies and literary response. The use of learning strategies in the literature classroom greatly impacts the level of the response of the students to the reading materials offered in the literature classroom.