Fostering Dutch Havo/Vwo Students' Reading Motivation in the ESL Classroom to Increase their Literary Competence

Abstract

Secondary school students in The Netherlands make up the age group that reads least in their spare time. Moreover, only 51% of this group enjoys reading. This lack of motivation forms a problem for havo/vwo bovenbouw students. After all, following Witte’s model for literary competence (2008), the future language curricula expect these students to reach a level of literary competence that requires them to be motivated. For this reason, the current study looked into what recommendations can be given to English upper-level teachers when it comes to fostering the reading motivation of their students in order to increase their literary competence. It did so by conducting a literature study to gain insight into reading motivation, and by conducting a nationwide survey (n=70) and in-depth interviews (n=9) with havo/vwo bovenbouw English teachers to gain insight into practice to this regard. The literature study firstly looked into the different theories that exist about reading motivation. Next, using the findings by Guthrie and Wigfield (2000) as a basis, the literature study explored what specific motivational factors can be drawn from the found theories about reading motivation. The following motivational factors were found: student choice, piquing interest, peer group discussion, teachers’ goal-orientation, strategy instruction, sustained silent reading, compensating towards boys, and use of social media. Moreover, it was argued that using the comprehensive approach for teaching literature (Bloemert et al., 2016) would further enable students to become more literary competent. The goal of the survey was to highlight to what extent teachers already use the motivational factors found in theory. Its results pointed out that most factors are used and thus likely deemed useful by English teachers. However, questions were raised about the use of social media and whether the type of goal-orientation actually matters. Moreover, it was argued that teachers should follow the comprehensive approach to teaching literature more. Lastly, the interviews had the goal to provide a more in-depth insight into what teachers’ motivational methods actually entail. This part of the study highlighted three different approaches towards teaching literature and fostering reading motivation. The approach recommended by this study balances fostering students’ reading motivation with aiming to increase increasing their literary competence. Although the recommendations of the current study may prove useful for English teachers, further research about this topic is necessary due to the small scope of this study and its focus on teachers’ perspectives.