Teaching Short Stories: Challenges and Issues

Abstract

This research work entitled “Teaching Short Stories: Challenges and Issues” aims to explore the challenges and issues faced by English teachers of higher secondary level (XI). I have analyzed the challenges and the issues on the basis of responses collected from the questionnaires and check list. For this, I purposely selected 15 higher secondary English teachers who have the experience of teaching English at least of one year from different schools of Kathmandu district. I prepared checklist for class observation with some criteria and questionnaire to find out the responses of teachers of English. From the obtained data it was found that all the students in the class did not get equal opportunity to learn the lesson due to the students themselves. It was also found that teachers faced difficulty in teaching short stories because of the long structures and difficult vocabulary used in the short stories. It was found that to reduce the challenges in teaching short stories trainings, workshops, refreshers courses are to be given regarding teaching short stories. This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter one deals with the introduction, general background, language, literature, genres of literature, teaching language through literature, elements of short stories, types of short stories, characteristics of short stories, review of the related literature, objectives of the study, and significance of the study. Chapter two deals with the research methodology adopted for the study in which sources of data, sampling procedures, tools for data collection, processes of data collection and limitations of the study are included. Likewise, chapter three deals with the analysis and 11 interpretation of the challenges and the issues in teaching short stories. In this chapter, primarily, experienced teachers responses have been described. Chapter four presents the research findings and recommendations based on the analysis and interpretation of the data. This chapter is followed by references and appendices.