Crafting the Literary Experience Examining Comprehension Strategies, Teaching Models, and Critical Approaches in Lesson Planning on Relationship-themed Poetry

The paradigm shift to outcomes-based education in institutions of higher learning entails a closer examination of the numerous processes meaningful to students’ acquisition of work-oriented skills. In English as a Second Language (ESL) pre-service teachers’ training, lesson planning is considered as one of the core skills often related to teaching effectiveness. An examination of the acquisition of this essential technical skill by pre-service teachers can provide an understanding of the complexity of translating literary content into teachable and learnable units. Hence, this study examined the comprehension strategies, teaching models, and critical approaches utilized by pre-service teachers in lesson planning on relationship-themed poetry. Although synthesizing strategy ranked first among the comprehension strategies for it enabled the participants to put together ideas from multiple sources in generating better perspective on the issues conveyed in literary selection, the quantitative data treated with Kendall’s coefficient of concordance revealed poor agreement as the participants exhibited varied strategies in textual interpretation. Meanwhile, moderate agreement or concordance among the participants was found on their consideration of the appropriateness of personal growth model in lesson planning on relationship-themed poetry as this model can expose students to issues or challenges favorable to their growth and development as human beings. An examination of the participants’ constructed lesson plans also revealed their preference on reader-oriented, text-oriented, reality-oriented, and author- oriented approaches in facilitating textual analysis and making abstraction on relationship-themed poetry.

Keywords – Lesson planning, Pre-service teachers, Relationship-themed poetry, Teaching of literature