Lived Experiences of English Teachers in Teaching Literature Under New Normal

This study deeply examines the lived experiences of English teachers in teaching literature under new normal. It aims to unveil and identify common responses from the participants’ experiences, coping mechanisms and gained insights on aforementioned phenomenon. The participants of the study are Senior High School English teachers both came from public and private institutions in the province of Davao de Oro who were able to teach literature subjects during the phenomenon irrespective of major of specialization. This qualitative study used phenomenological design with seven (7) participants from in-depth interview and another seven (7) participants from focus group discussion. There are fifteen (15) themes interpreted according to the notion of transactional distance theory. During pandemic, English teachers confronts challenges in teaching the subject such difficulty in instructing literary interpretation, unresponsive students in accomplishing literary tasks, inability of the students to contextualize literary interpretation, however, the participants also considered the pandemic period helpful towards discovery of teaching strategies such as utilization of media in facilitating literary assessment whether it is authentic, collaborative, or written-based activities. The result of the study reveals that physical separation has brought gap to interaction yet helps broaden opportunity of English teachers to discover the advantage of technology in reaching out students amidst pandemic.