Materials Design: A Reader-Response Approach to Using Homer’s Odyssey in The Cypriot EFL Context

Abstract Book of the  9th International Conference on Future of Teaching and Education and Humanities

Year: 2025

DOI:

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Materials Design: A Reader-Response Approach to Using Homer’s Odyssey in The Cypriot EFL Context

Dr. Elina Stylianou

ABSTRACT:

This presentation discusses the theoretical framework for the present study: Reader-Response theory, which values the reader in an interaction with a literary text. The researcher designed and delivered an intervention to Year 2 secondary school students in the Cypriot EFL context. This presentation focuses on Materials Design, explaining the lesson plans used in the intervention, which consisted of the nine sessions using Homer’s Odyssey as a culturally familiar literary text in the Cypriot context. It discusses the lesson plans by providing the pedagogical rationale behind them and explaining the aims of the formative assessments used in the lessons. The students in the Cypriot EFL context used their higher-order thinking skills to make their interpretation of the text while developing their English language skills. They experienced both efferent reading and aesthetic reading, with their cultural familiarity with the text enabling them to experience personal reactions. This presentation provides empirical evidence supporting a Reader-Response approach to using culturally familiar literature in teaching English as a foreign language. This empirical study can therefore prepare language teachers and curriculum developers for the use of culturally familiar literary texts in language teaching.

keywords: cultural familiarity, EFL teaching, learner-centred activities, literature, Reader-Response theory