The main focus of the analysis has been the student-to-student interactions and classroom discourse taking place during literature circles discussions.
The results show that, during the process of this research, the students were highly motivated for reading and in that way improved their interactional skills in English.
Nowadays, nearly all EFL coursebooks compete to include the most up-to-date and interesting texts for the target age group, while on the other hand the fiction literature has a treasure of themes which, relate more to our everyday lives.
In this article, the term 'literature circles' in the EFL classroom refers to; small groups of students reading the same piece of literature to accomplish different tasks like preparing questions, reporting challenging vocabulary, finding cultural items, determining the well written parts or making connections with the contemporary society.
The idea of 'Literature Circles in EFL' initially came from the adult 'book clubs' defined as a group of people who meet regularly to discuss the specific book they have read and share their opinions, likes or dislikes about it.
According to DaLie,[2] the true intent of Literature Circles is "to allow students to practice and develop the skills and strategies of good readers" in English as their native language.
Schlick Noe & Johnson[3] further explain that, you may hear talks about events and characters in the book, the author's craft, or personal experiences related to the story.
As a key element of the English L1 classes in US, Daniels[4] explains 'Literature Circles' as a form of independent reading, structured as collaborative small groups, and guided by reader-response principles in light of current comprehension research.
As it is clear that classroom interaction and social learning will appeal to teachers and researchers who have an interest in classroom discourse, this research tends to find out more about the extent and importance of literary discourse in foreign language acquisition and the need and importance of literary texts for a comprehensive attainment of higher levels of language skills.
The primary research rationale suggests that, as a balanced element of the school curriculum, literature circles can provide an exciting way to promote student engagement in social interaction and improve foreign language learning by means of cooperative learning and collaborative work and offer the potential to promote reading for enjoyment.
It is suggested by Schlick Noe & Johnson[3] that 'Literature Circles' are easy to fit into a comprehensive literacy program as a way for students to apply what they are learning about reading and writing.
This research project mainly focuses on literature circles, which Daniels[4] describes as a quite sophisticated and highly evolved part of the wider collaborative learning movement.
When we consider the advantages of small group structure and active student participation in collaborative and cooperative tasks over passive, lecture based teaching, the two terms seem quite close in meaning.
Twelfth-grade is the graduation year, when students study intensively to get ready for university entrance exams such as, State-Graduation-Exam, TOEFL, IELTS or SAT.
To achieve this, a classroom observation form for the teacher was chosen which complies with Bales' Interaction Process Analysis System (IPA).
The source for the data was primarily collected via semi structured methods such as the video recordings of the literature circles, stimulated-recall sessions followed by interviews and questionnaires filled in by students and teachers notes on the discussions conducted in class.
Bales[13] identified 12 interactional "moves" in four categories: (1) socio-emotional positive (shows solidarity, tension reduction, agreement); (2) socio-emotional negative (shows antagonism, tension, disagreement); (3) task-related attempted solutions (gives suggestions, opinions, orientation); and (4) task-related questions (asks for suggestions, opinions, orientation).
The reason for such a low number has been the fact that the participants were mainly chosen to provide an authentic classroom atmosphere to be observed and evaluated in relation to the determined criteria.
But on the other hand, it is also significant that they need to improve their skills of encouraging others to participate, giving reasons for their opinions, offering their suggestion and speaking clearly enough.
The methods of using literature circles to practice foreign language show encouraging results for both teenagers and young adults and are efficient compared to other conventional techniques in EFL classrooms.
The main rationale for this research was to find out the benefits of using literature circles in English as a foreign language learning environments.
One of the significant findings to emerge from this study was, if the literature circles help language learning through stimulation of the classroom atmosphere by having the teachers and students focus on the interaction patterns during the book discussion sessions.
The main focus of the analysis part was the contrast in interactions and classroom discourse taking place in literature circles and regular alternative extensive reading classes.
The main variables observed were 'classroom activities' like, activity type, participant organization, content, student modality and materials and 'classroom language' like, the use of target language, information gaps, sustained speech, reaction to code or message, incorporation of preceding utterances, discourse initiation and relative restrictions of linguistic forms.
If we take the reflections of the student and the results of the observations into consideration, it is evident that the implication of literature circles is a rather different procedure compared to ordinary classroom instruction.
During this study the participants enjoyed the sense of responsibility for their own learning and decided to improve their interaction skills to become better English language learners.
As for the benefits in EFL classes, it is also observed that literature circles facilitate learning by giving students an opportunity to share opinions in a specially designed classroom atmosphere, practicing situations very similar to real life experiences.
If the teacher manages to produce a collaborative learning environment with the suitable materials, I believe that the students will be readily eager to participate and support the shared experience and knowledge created in the classroom.
One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that the students were motivated to reading and by this means improved their foreign language skills during the process of this research.
In addition to these points, the research could further explore the development of materials and procedures appropriate for different purposes or levels of competency in foreign languages.