LITERARY ELEMENTS IN EFL STUDENTS’ RESPONSESTO FICTION WORKS

CANTHO UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

LITERARY ELEMENTS
IN EFL STUDENTS’ RESPONSES TO FICTION WORKS

B. A Thesis

Supervisor: Chung Thị Thanh Hằng, M.A

Student: Nhâm Thành Lập
Class: NN0752 A1
Student code: 7075852

Cantho, April 2011


ACKNOWLEGMENTS
But for the assistance and contribution of many people, I could not finish this
research. So I should like here to express my deep gratitude to them.
First of all, I owe my supervisor, Ms. Chung Thi Thanh Hang, a great debt of
gratitude for her enthusiastic assistance, comments and encouragement. Without her
guidance, I would be definitely stuck in the mess of ideas and methods as doing research.
Secondly, I am extremely grateful to Ms. Nguyen Thi Van Su and Mr. Do Xuan
Hai who gave me valuable comments to improve my thesis.
Thirdly, I would like to express my thanks to Ms. Ngo Thi Trang Thao for caring
and encouraging me to finish this study.
Last but not least, I have my close friends, Phan Huynh Thanh Truc and Ly Thi
Anh Tuyet, to thank for helping me analyze the response journals and I wish to send my
deep gratitude to the students of English Education especially ones whose course is

thirty-four for allowing me to analyze heir response journals.

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ABSTRACT
This research was conducted to investigate the EFL Students’ response to fiction
works which they learnt in “Introduction to America and British Literature” class. The
research was expected to find out what literary elements appear and the extent of their
appearance in the EFL students’ response journals to fiction works. The research applied
the method used in a previous similar study by Purves and Rippere (1968). The research
data was captured by collecting the response journals to fiction works in the curriculum
of “Introduction to America and British Literature” class from the EFL students. The
thirty-two journals collected were analyzed by four analyzing boards which were
designed based on the system of literary elements in the study of Purves and Rippere. The
literary elements were classified into four categories: engagement-involvement,
perception, interpretation, and evaluation. In each category, there are many specific
elements. The research findings indicated that in each category, the EFL students focused
on some elements and did not care the rest, and among the four categories, perception
had the highest extent of appearance in the EFL students’ response journals.

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TÓM TẮT
Nghiên cứu này được thực hiện nhằm điều tra mức phản hồi của sinh viên chuyên
ngành tiếng Anh đối với các tác phẩm truyện ngắn được học trong lớp “Dẫn luận văn
chương Anh Mĩ”. Nghiên cứu được mong đợi sẽ tìm ra những yếu tố văn chương xuất
hiện trong những bài viết phản hồi của sinh viên tiếng Anh đối với các truyện ngắn và
mức độ xuất hiện của chúng trong các bài viết đó. Nghiên cứu này áp dụng phương pháp

của một nghiên cứu tương tự trước đây được tiến hành bởi Purves và Rippere(1968).
Nghiên cứu lấy dữ liệu từ việc thu thập những bài viết sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh
phản hồi các tác phẩm truyện ngắn trong chương trình học của lớp “Dẫn luận văn
chương”. Ba mươi hai bài viết sau khi thu thập được phân tích bởi bốn bảng phân tích
thiết kế dựa trên hệ thống những yếu tố văn chương trong nghiên cứu của Purves và
Rippere. Những yếu tố văn chương được phân chia thành bốn nhóm: phản ứng, nhận
thức, liên tưởng, và đánh giá đối với những nội dung, hình thức, biện pháp nghệ thuật
trong tác phẩm. Mỗi một nhóm lại có từng yếu tố đặc trưng. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy
trong từng nhóm yếu tố, sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh chỉ tập trung vào một số yếu
tố và không quan tâm đến những yếu tố còn lại, và giữa bốn nhóm yếu tố với nhau thì
nhóm yếu tố nhận thức có mức độ xuất hiện cao nhất trong những bài viết phản hồi của
sinh viên.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

Pages

Acknowledgement ............................................................................................... i
Abstract............................................................................................................... ii
Table of content ..................................................................................................iv
List of tables...................................................................................................... vii
List of figures .................................................................................................... vii
Chapter 1. Introduction.........................................................................................1
1.1. Statement of the problem ..........................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the study and research questions ..................................................2
1.3. General organization of the study..............................................................2
Chapter 2. Literature Review ................................................................................3

1. Response to literature and its role ................................................................3
1.1. Definition of response .............................................................................3
1.2. Definition of response to literature ..........................................................3
1.3. The role of response to literature.............................................................4
2. Response to literature through the journals...................................................5
3. Review of classifications of the elements in response journals .....................5
3.1. The classification of Guerin ....................................................................5
3.2. The classification of Squire .....................................................................6
3.3. The classification of Purves and Rippere.................................................7
4. The elaboration of elements in the response journals
in Purves’ and Rippere’s study ……………………………………..............8
4.1. Engagement-Involvement .......................................................................8
4.1.1. Reaction to author .............................................................................9
4.1.2. Assent to the work.............................................................................9
4.1.3. Moral taste ........................................................................................9
4.1.4. Re-creation of the effect of the work .................................................9
4.1.5. Word associations .............................................................................9
4.1.6. Retelling the work in a form different from the author’s ....................9
4.1.7. Moral reaction...................................................................................9
4.1.8. Conjecture.........................................................................................9
4.1.9. Identification of the writer with the work ........................................10

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4.2. Perception............................................................................................10
4.2.1. Objective perception .......................................................................10
4.2.2. Reading comprehension ...................................................................10
4.2.3. Perception of language .....................................................................10
4.2.4. Literary devices................................................................................10

4.2.5. Content ............................................................................................11
4.2.6. Relation of technique to content .......................................................11
4.2.7. Perception of structure .....................................................................11
4.2.8. Tone.................................................................................................11
4.2.9. Literary classification.......................................................................11
4.3. Interpretation ........................................................................................11
4.3.1. Interpretive context ..........................................................................11
4.3.2. The use of part as key to the interpretation of the whole ...................12
4.3.3. Interpretation of style .......................................................................12
4.3.4. Interpretation about the past or present .............................................12
4.3.5. Character analysis ............................................................................12
4.3.6. Inference about setting .....................................................................12
4.3.7. Inference about author......................................................................12
4.3.8. Interpretation of the whole ...............................................................12
4.4. Evaluation.............................................................................................13
4.4.1. Citation of criteria ............................................................................13
4.4.2. Affective evaluation .........................................................................13
4.4.3. Evaluation of the author’s method....................................................13
4.4.4. Evaluation of the author’s vision ......................................................13
5. Justification of the present study .................................................................13
Chapter 3. Research methodology ......................................................................15
1. Research design ..........................................................................................15
2. Participants.................................................................................................15
3. Instrument ..................................................................................................16
4. Procedure ...................................................................................................17
4.1. Data collection.......................................................................................17
4.2. Data analysis..........................................................................................17

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Chapter 4. Results and discussion .......................................................................19
1. Result and discussion of each category ......................................................19
1.1. Result ...................................................................................................19
1.1.1. Engagement-Involvement ................................................................19
1.1.2. Perception ........................................................................................22
1.1.3. Interpretation ...................................................................................24
1.1.4. Evaluation........................................................................................26
1.2. Discussion ............................................................................................28
2. Result and discussion of the four categories ................................................30
2.1. Result ...................................................................................................30
2.2. Discussion ............................................................................................31
Chapter 5. Implication, limitation, recommendation and conclusion ...................32
1. Implications...............................................................................................32
2. Limitations ................................................................................................32
3. Recommendation for further research ........................................................33
4. Conclusion.................................................................................................33
References..........................................................................................................34
Appendix A........................................................................................................35
Appendix B ........................................................................................................37

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LIST OF TABLE
1. Table 1....................................................................................................16
2. Table 2....................................................................................................18

LIST OF FIGURE
1. Figure 4.1 ................................................................................................21

2. Figure 4.2 ................................................................................................23
3. Figure 4.3 ................................................................................................25
4. Figure 4.4 ................................................................................................27
Figure 4.5

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Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1. Statement of the problem
In the classroom of literature, the students after learning literary works are
requested to express their feelings, thoughts in discussions or to write them down in the
journals. There is such request since for the teachers, teaching literature must consider
not only the literary work but also the way in which students respond to a literary work
(Squire, 1964). However, in a report of National Council of teacher of English, Purves
and Rippere claim that the students’ response to literature is like an iceberg (Purves and
Rippere, 1968). That means there are some visible and invisible parts in the students’
response to literature. The students’ response is partly visible with their opinions, ideas
spoken out in the discussions or written in their journals. Whereas, there is not enough
time for every student to show what they want to say in a discussion, and it is not easy to
understand completely what the students respond through their journals because of
complicated structures, and expressions. That is the reason why the students’ response to
literature is almost unclear to their teachers.
This problem also occurs in the courses of foreign literature of English-majored
students in Cantho University. Catching the students’ response to literature unclearly, the
teachers may encounter some difficulties to know how much their students understand a
literary work and what they think of that work. So this research is carried out to discover
the students’ response to literature to help the teachers have a clear view of their students’
limits and weaknesses in responding to literature. It is hoped that there will be some

improvements from teachers to develop students’ response to a higher level.
This thesis is based on the study of response to literature which is conducted by
Purves and Ripperes. With the aim of discovering the iceberg in students’ response to
literature, these researchers posed a specific formulation of content analysis for the high
school students’ response journals to literary works. This formulation is applied in the
present study to analyze the response journals of the CTU English-majored students in
the course “Introduction to America and British Literature”. Beside the purpose of
discovering the CTU students’ response to literature, the research is also concerned with

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the differences and similarities in response to literature between the high school students
in the previous study and English-majored students in Can tho University.
2. Statement of the aims and research questions
Focusing on discovering the students’ response to literature, this research aims to
identify literary elements that appear in the English-majored students’ response journals
and the frequency of these elements in the journals. With this purpose, the research
investigates the following questions:
 What literary elements appear in the English-majored students’ response journals
to the fiction works in the course of the “Introduction to American and British
Literature”?
 How often do these elements occur in these response journals?
3. General Organization
This research consists of five chapters and three appendices.
Chapter one is an introduction of the research in which the statements of the
problem, research aims and research questions are presented.
Chapter two, Literature Review, is the review of previous studies in response’s
role in learning, student’s response to literature, and elements of writing about literary
works. These studies play the role of foundation for this research.

Chapter three is a general description of the research design, participant, materials,
and procedure, the periods in the process of the research.
Chapter four, Results and Discussion, displays data analysis, syntheses of
statistics, and discusses the similar and different points in finding between the present
study and the previous ones.
Chapter five includes the implications for teaching from the findings of this
research. Also, the limitations of this research are mentioned.
The three appendices contain the system of literary elements of writing about a
literary work which is withdrawn from the study of Purves and Rippere (1968), the four
tables designed to analyze the students’ response journals, and the quotations of the
statements from the students’ response journals.

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Chapter two
LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature review falls into four sections. The first section, Response to
literature and its roles, contains the definition and importance of response to literature,
withdrawn from a variety of studies. The second section, Response to literature through
the journals, presents the reason why the research on students’ response to literature is
conducted through gathering and analyzing the students’ response journals. The third
one, the ways of classifying the elements in the response journals, shows a review of the
studies about classifications of elements occurring in the response journals. The forth
selection, the elaboration of elements in the response journals in Purves’ and Rippere’s
study, describes the specific literary elements in each category. And the closing section,
justification of the present study, summarizes the literature and indicates the implications
this thesis achieves from the literature.
1. Response to literature and its roles
1.1.

Definition of response

In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the word “response” means a spoken or
written answer, or a reaction to something that has happened or has been said. This
definition shows that response cannot occur unintentionally, and to have a response, there
must be something occurring before to stimulate a reaction.
With this characteristic, response is considered as one of the three moves in the
exchange of a conversation, including initiating move, responding move and the followup (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975). In a conversation, it is initiation that occurs first to
lead a response. For example:
A: Shall we go out tonight?

Initiation

B: Oh, that’s awesome.

Response

In the initiation-response sequence, the response can be an answer, comment or an
expression of acknowledgement to what mentioned in the initiation.
1.2.

Definition of response to literature

This kind of response also needs an initiation which is literature. Like the
initiation-response sequence, response to literature is the process in which the reader

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reacts in mind and feeling to the literacy texts (Rosenblatt, 1938). However, Purves and
Rippere (1968) claims that it is not easy to have a specific definition for response to
literature since this type of response, a form being full of senses and emotion, belongs to
the mental fields. It “encompasses the cognitive, affective, perceptual, and psychomotor
activities” which are performed by the reader of a poem or story (p. xiii).
1.3.

The role of response to literature

Response to literature is the process in which the reader reacts in mind and feeling
to the literacy texts containing various contents, so there exists an interaction between the
reader and the literacy text. Concerning about this, Louise Rosenblatt proposed the
notions related in 1938 and brought them to more full development in 1978. Rosenblatt
(1978) asserts that the reader’s view not only actively makes meaning but also brings
something new to the transactions between the reader and literacy texts. In fact, the
reader’s response joins the re-creation of the literary works. Analyzing the studies in
reading response, Dias and Hayhoe(1988) agrees with Rosenblatt’s thinking and gives
supplementary notion of Bleich (1975, 1978))“that reading is a wholly subjective process
and that the nature of what is perceived is determined by the rules of the personality of
the perceiver” (1975, p.3). These theories, to sum up, affirms the role of the reader whose
minds and view points are deciding factors in the transaction between the reader and the
literacy text ; the reader is considered as active performer rather than passive receiver in
response to literature.
In section one, the importance of response which has been presented in general
also occurs in response to literature. That means response to literature is a part of output
process and manifests the attitude of the readers. In particular, response to literature is the
target of the literature language classroom and a useful instrument for the EFL students in
reading. Firstly, that response to literature is considered as the target is mentioned in
“Literary Reading and Classroom Constraints” by Dias (1992). Dias supposes that the
main and most important goal of teaching literature is to bring up the growth of

independent readers. Collie and Slater(1987) make this idea clearer through insisting that
the point of the activities and tasks related to literature in the language classroom is to
increase the students’ confidence so that they can develop, express and value their own
response. The students are expected to become more and more independent on received
opinions and to find it interested and able to assess other perspectives. Secondly, the

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function of response to literature is stated in the theories of Gambrell(1986) and Hickman
(1983). The way the students respond to what they read help themselves develop deeper
understandings and relate the contents in the stories to their own experiences. In brief,
response to literature is the aim of teaching literature in EFL class and also the key for the
students to open up limitless prospect of discovering the new language and finding out
themselves.
2. Response to literature through the journals
Response to literature can be expressed through both speaking and writing. Like
speaking, writing can develop a personal voice by expressing the writer's emotion and
thoughts in words. Moreover, in writing the students have more time to think of the best
ideas with the best expressions. The form of response writings, often called response
journals, is very popular in the class of literature. The research conducted by Heather
indicates that the students like the response journal because it is interesting and low
pressured (Heather, 2000). Also, the freedom of this kind of writing allows the students
to write in the way they like without concerning the requirement of well-formed
paragraphs, careful editing, or a thesis. This plays a significant role in response to
literature because the good state of mentality can highly impulse the development of
students’ response to literature (Dias, 1992). In brief, through the response journals, the
students have many advantages to express their response to literature clearly and
effectively. This is also the reason why response journals have been used in the studies on
response to literature for a long time.

3. Review of classifications of the elements in response journals
A variety of literary elements have been drawn since the early nineteenth century,
the time of the initial studies on the literary field such as Rosenblatt’s. A majority of
these elements are ones occurring in writing especially the journals responding to literary
works. Up to now there have been many ways of classifying these elements by many
researchers.
3.1.

The classification of Guerin

Guerin (1966) shows a classification of elements in critical approaches to various
types of literary works with seven categories including textual-linguistic, historical-

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biographical,

moral-philosophical,

formalistic,

psychological,

archetypal,

and

typological.
The category of textual-linguistic includes the elements about the language use,

figure of speech and literary devices that the author uses in his work
Historical-biographical refers to the setting of the work and also the biography of
the author. The reasons or the inspiration urging the author to write the work also belong
to this category.
Moral-philosophical consists of the elements related to the reader’s moral taste or
the reader’s attitude to the incidents occurring in the work.
Formalistic refers to the way the author arranges every part of the work and links
them together to form a sequence of incidents in the plot.
Psychological is the category in which contains complicated elements about what
the reader perceives and how they feel from the work. In other words, the elements of
perception and emotion are both specific for this category.
Archetypal refers to the way the reader refers some symbols or characters in the
work to something real or heroes in the real life.
Typological is concerned with classifying the work in a specific literary
classification, like “this work is a love story” or “this is a realistic work”. To classify the
works in such classifications, the reader bases on any incidents in the work.
3.2.

The classification of Squire

In early research done by Squire (1964), he also brings one out. Classified by
Squire, the elements of response to literature fall into seven categories which are literary
judgments, interpretational response, narrational reactions, associational responses, selfinvolvement, prescriptive judgments, and miscellaneous.
Literary judgements refer to the reader’s judgments on the literary or aesthetic
qualities of the work, like “It’s effective”, or “It’s good”.
Interpretational responses include the reader’s referring to the incidents in the
works to generalize the meaning of the whole work.
Narrational reactions are responses in which the reader just describes what
happens in the work without interpretation.
Associational responses are responses in which the reader associates everything in

the work with his own experience in his world.

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Self-involvement refers to the reader’s associating himself with the behavior or
emotion of the character in the work.
Prescriptive judgments refer to the reader’s plans or suggestions for the character
in the work. For example, “She ought to do this”, or “That old man shouldn’t go out that
night”.
Miscellaneous includes the elements which were not mentioned in the categories
above.
3.3.

The classification of Purves and Rippere

During the time of researching on the ways the writers with different backgrounds
write about a literary work, Purves (1968) realized the need of a method of content
analysis, a critically, impartial and readily comprehensible theory, which would assist the
researchers in analyzing a great variety of responses. He thinks that the categories
classified in Guerin's theory seem too general for the analysis of essays which asks for
more specific and detailed distinct groups of elements. The categories Squire suggested
in Purves’ opinion are still overlapped and like Guerin's. This way lacks a clear
distinction among the groups classified. What Purves wants to have in the method he
desires is a higher degree of discrimination and specific description in the categories of
elements in reader's response to literature. So he continues to find out another better
classification.
Through an examination of the responses Purves finds that the best division for the
elements of literature might be based on the reader's attitude towards the works which
appears from the relationship between the reader with his world and the literary works. In

advance, he considers the literary work as a verbal communication in which through the
content and the form of the work, the author expresses his intellect or imagination which
creates inside the reader a particular feeling and attitude. Relating the audience and his
relationship to the work, the universe of which the work treats, and the artist, Purves
draws out four general relationships: the direct interaction between the reader and the
work, the reader's viewing of the work and its author, the reader's relating the world in
the work to the world the reader conceives, and the reader's judgment of the work. These
four relationships define the categories into which the elements fall. They are
engagement-involvement, perception, interpretation, evaluation. Ensuring the distinctions
among the four categories as well as the clear description in each category, this

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classification could almost include all possibilities of discovering the reader’s response
lying under their response writings.
First of all, the category of engagement-involvement includes the elements which
express how the reader experiences everything of the literary work such as the incidents,
characters, plot, etc., what he feels about or think of these items, and what he reacts to
what he experiences.
The second category, perception, refers to the reader’s level of understanding the
work he responds to. Understanding the work here means the reader can catch everything
the author tried to present in the work. Perception elements simply appear when the
reader cites or paraphrases any statements from the work. What the reader writes in the
response journal cannot be beyond the work.
If in the category of perception, the work is considered the only object that the
reader analyzes and describes, the third category, interpretation, on the other hand,
concerns what apart from the work. That means the reader makes inferences from the
incidents, characters in the work to something and someone similar in the reader’s world.
In this way, the reader applies his own experience to respond the work.

And the last category, evaluation, is about the reader’s representing why the work
is good or bad. For evaluating the work, the reader is supposed to base on the elements of
engagement-involvement, perception or interpretation to come to his judgment. The
author’s style, literacy devices and the success of the work are ones which are evaluated.
Furthermore, this type of elements includes the effect the author and his work bring to the
reader. This refers to the lessons, moral items and significant meanings withdrawn from
the author’s vision.
It is clear that Guerin and Squire classify the elements in response to literature into
too many categories whose definition are abstract and complicated to the students at B.A.
level. On the contrary, the classification introduced by Purves and Rippere are really
succinct and easy to comprehend with only four categories and obvious distinction
among them. Another reason that the researcher highly appreciates the study of Purves
and Rippere is that they did make deep reference to a variety of previous studies on the
field of response to literature. The study by Squire and one by Purves’ and Rippere’s are
both the research reports of The National Council of Teacher of English (NCTE), which
are expert in the fields related to English Education with large-scale studies carried out by

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popular professors in many well-known universities in Europe and America. Squire’s
study is No.2 and Purves’ and Ripper’s is No.9 while both of them have nearly same
participants, the adolescents. Similar to Squire’s study, censored by the same council, but
conducted later, the study of Purves and Rippere must have been improved a lot from
reviewing Squire’s study. These reasons lead to the researcher’s decision to choose the
classification introduced in Purves’ and Rippere’s study as the basis to analyze the
response journals collected from the English-majored students in Cantho University.
4. The elaboration of elements in the response journals in Purves’ and Rippere’s
study
As mentioned above, in the classification presented in Purves’ and Rippere’s, there

are four categories of elements occurring in students’ response to literature, including
engagement-involvement, perception, interpretation, and evaluation. In each of the
category, these two researchers pose the specific elements and describe them in detail.
Following are the descriptions of the specific elements in each of four categories.
4.1.

Engagement-Involvement

The engagement-involvement elements are described to demonstrate the reader's
reaction to literature, form and content of the work. This category consists of nine
specific literary elements, reaction to author, assent to the work, moral taste, re-creation
of the effect of the work, word associations, retelling the work in a form different from
the author’s, moral reaction, conjecture, identification of the writer with the work.
4.1.1. Reaction to author
Reaction to author expresses the reader’s knowledge about the author and the
reader’s attitude to the author, like or dislike
For example: Always in reading Joyce’s stories I am filled with admiration for the
man’s great love for humanity, his erudition, and his wit.
4.1.2. Assent to the work
Assent to the work refers to the statements in the response journal in which the
reader recognizes the existence of the work whether this existence may be separate from
the real world.

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For example: To appreciate Tolken’s novel, I had to forego my distaste for the
supernatural; then I could read.
4.1.3. Moral taste
Moral taste refers to the statements about the morality of the work or of the author.

For example: The novel occasionally hovers on the verge of being tasteless
because of the author’s clinical and descriptive approach to his subject matter.
4.1.4. Rre-creation of the effect of the work
With this element, the reader uses metaphor to describe the parts related to the
form of the work such as plot, climax, rising action, etc.
For example: The climax comes like a blow with a sledge hammer.
4.1.5. Word associations
The reader is supposed to state his own personal feelings or associations towards a
particular word.
For example: The words of the title make me think of violence.
4.1.6. Retelling the work in a form different from the author’s
In reaction to form, the reader sometimes does not agree or satisfy with the
author’s arrangement in parts of the work.
For example: If I had written the story, I wouldn’t have made the ending so happy.
4.1.7. Moral reaction
With this element, the reader tends to expose emotion and attitude towards the
characters and incidents in the work.
For example: I think Huckleberry’s behavior is disgraceful and disgusting.
4.1.8. Conjecture
This element is expressed through the way in which the reader himself creates
another part non-existing in the work with the aim of bringing a better ending to the
work.
For example: I think that they will probably live happily ever after.
4.1.9. Identification of the writer with the work
This element is expressed through the statements in which the reader shows his
involvement in the situations set in the work.
For example: It seem like I was right next to Fabrice on the battle field.

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4.2.

Perception

The category of perception includes nine specific literary elements, objective
perception, reading comprehension, perception of language, literary devices, content, and
relation of technique to content, perception of structure, tone, and literary classification.
4.2.1 Objective perception
Objective perception means the reader’s awareness of general aspects of the work
such as how long it is, how the sections are divided, and how it is formatted.
For example: The poem was first published in the New York in 1953.
4.2.2 Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension is believed to be a negative element which shows the
limit of reader’s language competence.
For example: Since I don’t really know what “squalor” is, I didn’t get the story
“For Esmee with Love and Squalor”.
4.2.3 Perception of language
This element comprises the reader’s thinking of the concrete literary parts of the
work such as the elements of language with morphology, syntax, sound, diction.
For example: Within the paragraph, the sentences grow shorter and shorter.
4.2.4 Literary devices
This element is concerned with literary devices, including imagery, rhetorical
devices of metaphor, and simile.
For example: The poem starts with a personification.
4.2.5 Content
This element is concerned with subject matter, action, character identification and
description, characters’ relationship, and setting of milieu.
For example: The characters in the story are Rhoda and all her victims.
4.2.6 Relation of technique to content

Relation of technique to content includes the elements which relate the verbal,
stylistic to the sense and effect of the work.
For example: Jonas’ use of a paradox reflects the confused situation in which he
finds himself.
4.2.7 Perception of structure
Perception of structure is simply the element of describing the order of the work.

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For example: The section in which she breaks his glasses has all of the conflicts
which are in the rest of the story.
4.2.8 Tone
This element consists of descriptive elements of tone, effect, mood, pace and
author’s point of view
For example: The writer is generally objective, but sometimes he is angry.
4.2.9 Literary classification.
This element is shown through the various ways the reader uses to classify the
work.
For example: The novel is a comedy of errors.
4.3.

Interpretation

The category of interpretation contains eight specific literary elements, interpretive
context, the use of part as the key to the interpretation of the whole, interpretation of
style, inference about the past or present, character analysis, inference about setting,
inference about author, and interpretation of the whole.
4.3.1. Interpretive context
This element occurs when the reader compares the contexts in the real world to a

situation or an incident in the work.
For example: Society is made up of the rulers and the ruled.
4.3.2. The use of part as the key to the interpretation of the whole
This element refers to inferences about the general conclusions which the reader
inheres from some details in the work.
For example: The last stanza provides an answer to all the questions of meaning
raised in the work.
4.3.3. Interpretation of style
This element refers to the statements in the response journals in which the reader
shows what he infers from the author’s style in the work.
For example: Dickens’ highly metaphoric style in this scene shows his disdain for
the sort of rationalism.
4.3.4. Inference about the past or present

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This element is found out in the statements in which the reader infers about the
past or present in the work without moving beyond the facts given in the text.
For example: Claudius undoubtedly did kill Hamlet’s father.
4.3.5. Character analysis
Character analysis refers to the reader’s generalization about the character. This
generalization is based on the knowledge of the reader.
For example: Liar grows from a petty, foolish king to a humble human being.
4.3.6. Inference about setting
This element refers to the reader’s making inference about the setting of the work
from the clues in the work itself.
For example: From the few details we have, the story must have taken place at the
turn of the century.
4.3.7. Inference about author

This refers to statements about the inference made by the readers to the author’s
intention in writing the work or the relationship between the author and the characters,
incidents in the work.
For example: I think Tennyson had Dante in mind when he wrote “Ulysses”.
4.3.8. Interpretation of the whole
In the elements of interpretation of the whole, the world of the work is like a
mirror of the human world. The reader considers what happen in the work as reflection of
a fact in real life.
For example: Dickens shows us the confrontation of the autocrat and the peasant.
4.4.

Evaluation

The last category, evaluation, consists of four specific literary elements, citation of
criteria, affective evaluation, evaluation of the author’s method, evaluation of the author’s
vision.
4.4.1. Citation of criteria
This element refers to the reader’s definition of the standard for the work.
For example: A good novel should deal with serious issues.
4.4.2. Affective evaluation

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The element of affective evaluation is related to the emotional aspect. The success
or failure of the work is dependent on whether the author is able to create a high degree
of intensity in the work in order to make the reader moving or not.
For example: “A Snake of One’s Own” is a beautiful and moving story.
4.4.3. Evaluation of the author’s method
This element is expressed through the reader’s judgment on the way the author

creates the work.
For example: The author has succeeded in connecting each incident to every other.
4.4.4. Evaluation of the author’s vision
Evaluation of the author’s vision refers to the judgment on whether the author
could bring meaningful lessons from the work to the readers and why the work is worth
reading, etc.
For example: The novel is worthwhile, for it does not tell us how to live, but what
life is.
5. Justification of the present study
From the review of literature related to studies of response to literature, it can be
firstly seen that response to literature plays an important role in learning literature. It
helps the students not only understand clearly the literary works they learn but also
discover the new meanings of the works through reacting to various aspects of the work,
including content, language use, author, and literary devices, etc. of the works. Secondly,
response to literature is the field which has been researched for a long time. Based on
analyzing the useful and effective samples which are the students’ response journals, the
system of literary elements in response to literature has gradually developed to a specific
formulation of content analysis for response journals. The more specific this formulation
is, the more reliable and convenient the analysis of the present study is. Also, knowing
the students’ response to literature specifically, teachers can catch the strengths and limits
of their students in learning literature. In short, the various points of view and results
from previous studies on students’ response to literature ensure a firm theoretical basis
and the significance for the present study.

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Chapter three
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter focuses on describing four parts, Research Design, Participants,

Instrument, and Procedure. The description of procedures consists of two parts, data
collection and data analysis.
1. Research Design
To explore the literary elements and the frequency of their appearance in the
English-majored students’ response journals to the literary works in the curriculum of
“Introduction to America and British Literature”, this descriptive study was carried out.
The research data was captured through collecting the response journals of the
participant. Then, these journals were analyzed through four tables (Appendix B) which
were designed based on the system of literary elements (Appendix A) in the study of
Purves and Rippere (1968). The research questions were answered through statistics
found and counted from these analyses.
2. Participants
The target population of this research is the English-majored students in Cantho
University. In this population, there are two majors related to English, English Education
and English Language Study. And all of them have to take the course “Introduction to
America and British Literature” with nearly the same content. However, at the time the
research was initiated, the two classes of English Education students were taught by the
same teacher. Therefore, they were selected as the participants in order to ensure the
reliability of the research.
The participants for this research are 32 third-year students chosen randomly from
the two classes of “Introduction to America and British Literature” in English Education
Department in the first semester of the school year 2010-2011. The participants include 6
males and 26 females whose ages are from 21 to 25 years old. Each of them wrote a
journal to respond to a literary work they learnt in this course. The general characteristics
of the participants are demonstrated on table 1.

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Table 1: characteristics of participants (N = 32)

Gender

Number

Percentage

Age

Male

6

18.75

21 – 24

Female

26

81.25

21 - 25

3. Instrument
This research applies the method used in ““Elements of writing about literary
works” by Purves and Rippere (1968). Their research aimed to find a basis for comparing
responses to literature by students, teachers, and critics through collecting and analyzing
the response journals of these participants. To analyze these journals objectively,
effectively and accurately, these researchers posed a specific formulation of content

analysis for the response journals. This formulation was indeed a system of literary
elements with four distinctive categories, engagement-involvement, perception,
interpretation, evaluation and miscellaneous (Appendix A). They applied this formulation
to carry out a pilot study with 300 response journals by students at the age of thirteen and
seventeen from the United States, Great Britain, Belgium, and Germany. Based on the
formulation, each of the essays was analyzed by three independent readers who had
bachelor’s degrees. And the result was found that two out of three readers agreed on close
to 90 percent of judgment on those response journals.
With that reliable result, the formulation of content analysis by Purves and
Rippere is applied in this research. Based on the four distinctive categories in the
formulation, the four tables, each of which represents one of four categories of elements
(engagement-involvement, perception, interpretation, and evaluation) were formed as the
instruments for this research. In each category, there are many specific elements. For
example, the category of perception elements includes the elements of objective
perception, reading comprehension, language, literary devices, content, relation of
technique to content, structure, tone, and literary classification. Each column of the table
contains every specific element belong to the category that table represents. Every
response journal was analyzed using all these four tables (Appendix B).

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4. Procedure
4.1.

Data collection

The research was initiated at the early of January 2011, when the participants had
finished the course of “Introduction to American and British Literature”. It took two
weeks to collect all 32 response journals of the participants. This number considered to

reach the reliability of the research.
4.2.

Data analysis

Every response journal was analyzed based on the instruments which are the four
tables with the specific elements of each category in the columns of the tables (Appendix
B). When a journal had any specific elements of that table, there would be a cross (X) in
the corresponding square of the table. Then, the crosses of each element were counted.
One cross represents one element. This analyzing is demonstrated in the table two.
Based on the number of each specific element in every category, the researcher
brought all elements of that category into comparison to find out the literary elements
occurring and their frequency in the students’ response journals.
Next, based on their total number, the elements of four categories were compared
mutually order to find out the frequency among the four categories of literary elements in
the students’ response journals.
This process of analysis took the most time since each response journals had to be
analyzed by two readers who are last year English-majored students and understand the
instruments as well as the data analysis clearly. The difference between the two
judgments does not reach more than ten percent, which ensures the reliability and validity
of this research.

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