Abstract

The fiction of Flannery O'Connor is recognized as some of the best fiction in the world. One would expect that learners sharing the same Catholic beliefs would easily understand her works. The study explores a semester class of mainly Catholic Filipinos studying her short stories and a novel, classroom observation and weekly journals provide feedback on how well the text is received by those with similar beliefs as the author. Results show that despite understanding Catholic beliefs, learners fail to get deeper into her stories. The most probable cause is due to a lack of reading skills of the learners. Thus, her stories run much deeper and broader, not requiring a background of Catholic belief. Other studies can conduct a more systematic evaluation of the effect of learner background in learning.