Literary Appreciation Skills and Reading Performance of University Students

Abstract

Reading literature is the best way to know who we are, what we are, and what we used to be. Through descriptive correlational research design, the study assessed the literary appreciation skills and reading performance of college students in learning literature, which may provide input to innovative learning tasks in developing their literary competence. Complete enumeration of the ninety students enrolled in Philippine Literature subject from the three college departments of one campus of a government owned Higher Education in Region 02, Philippines were the participants of the study. Findings reveal that the students have a fair level of literary appreciation skills but have relatively low literary appreciation skills along, recognition of author's point of view; ability to judge the text, recognition of personal philosophy based on literary text read, and relating the story to personal lives. Meanwhile, students have a satisfactory performance in literature learning and that literary appreciation skills and reading performance of students differ when grouped according to their college affiliations. Furthermore, there is a significant positive relationship between the literary appreciation skills and reading performance. Finally, this study proposes the use of 29 innovative learning tasks for literature classes.