Investigating Students’ Needs Using the Comprehensive Approach to FL Literature Learning

This study is an attempt to investigate students’ needs from the Literary Reading Program at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Suluq Campus). Although English literature is an established university course throughout the English departments of the Libyan universities, no systematic research has been conducted to examine students’ needs from English literature courses in the Libyan context to investigate their merits or shortcomings. Therefore, the rationale for conducting this study is that the literary reading program has been devised without taking into consideration students’ needs and perceptions. The study adopted the mixed-method approach to elicit students’ needs and perceptions using a questionnaire and an interview to gather qualitative and quantitative data for enriching the analysis. The questionnaire and the interview were designed according to the Comprehensive Approach to Foreign Language Literature Learning, through which students select the components that satisfy their needs. In addition, the course instructor was also interviewed to elicit his perceptions about the program. The study revealed that 40% of students expressed their need to apply the text approach in their literary reading program. The main contribution of this study is that it does not only present the findings of students’ needs, as most studies are concerned with the field of needs analysis; it also presents a literary reading program that could be put into practice by English Department policymakers.