Literary Competence

Of the many dilemmas facing the assessment of literary competence, one is the extent to which language should constitute part of the target construct intended to be measured. Some argue for the construct-irrelevance of language and hence recommend that it be eliminated or minimized in favor of an exclusive focus on literary competence. In practice, this does not seem to be the case, as language proficiency considerations seem to creep into assessment, clouding assessment outcomes. The current study sought to examine students' perceptions of the degree to which knowledge of language constitutes part of the construct of literary competence in two departments of English and Persian literature. To this end, a total of seventy students in two poetry courses, one in the English department and the other in the Persian, responded to a questionnaire designed to gauge their perceptions of the extent to which language competence constitutes a component of the literary competence. Data were analyzed through one sample and independent samples t-tests. It was found that language competence is somehow construct-irrelevant in testing literary competence. Interestingly, measurement-invariance was observed regarding Persian and EFL students’ stance on the construct-irrelevance of language in tests of literary achievement and competence.

The present paper aimed at highlighting the judicious incorporation of literary genres (i.e. novel, short story/fiction, drama, and poetry) as a supposedly inspiring teaching technique and an allegedly potent learning resource into ESL/EFL curricula. The rationale behind this pedagogical inclusion is to promote both teaching and learning effectiveness through capitalizing intensively on the genres so as to teach basic language skills and language areas- macro and micro levels. Much mention was made of the 'why' (i.e. justification and benefits), the 'how' (i.e. logistical considerations), the 'where' and the 'when' (i.e. spatiotemporal factors) aspects of introducing literary texts into the confines of the ESL/EFL classroom. What this vigorous discussion spawned was some detailed accounts of literary competence as an overarching term consisting of morphological, lexical, phonological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, discourse, stylistic, and sociolinguistic / sociocultural knowledge bases . Afterwards, evaluation process as the last but most important element of the teaching-learning process was explicated. In the end, seven solutions to the problems and dangers of using culture transmitters in the ESL/EFL classroom were suggested in an attempt to bring literature and ESL/EFL pedagogy into a happy contact leading to teaching and learning effectiveness maximization.