The Pedagogical Application of Explicit and Tacit Descriptions of Films for Understanding Literary Texts

Abstract

Due to the influence of the communicative approach from the 1980s, literary texts have been less used as part of English education in Japan despite their potential. Reading focused on spatial prepositions and adverbs leads readers to find psychological meanings in characters' behaviors or spatial positions. Alternatively, film adaptations have explicit and tacit descriptions derived from the physical and abstract descriptions in literary texts. This paper examines whether using films in reading literature affects English learners' awareness of characters' behaviors, spatial positions, and mind. A one-shot experiment was carried out with 44 English learners (university students) over three months (13 observations). In assessing the portfolios by the learners, awareness about the literary text used gradually increased, while inferring meanings from the film decreased from observation Nos. 9 to 13. In addition, the concepts 'detailedness of literary texts' and 'reconsidering literary texts from films' were found by analysis of the portfolio data through Modified Grounded Theory Approach (Kinoshita, 2003). In conclusion, explicit and tacit descriptions in films have a positive effect on literary awareness during each stage of the learning process.