Abstract

This exploratory study was conducted to examine the influence of expertise on the subject matter knowledge of literary devices among English language teachers. Data was collected from 246 English language teachers in a district in north Malaysia and it was analyzed quantitatively. The findings of the study revealed expertise influenced the subject matter knowledge of literary devices of the three groups namely novice, competent and expert English language teachers. The expert English language teachers were significantly different in their subject matter knowledge of literary devices from the competent and novice English language teachers. They were also better in their subject matter knowledge of literary devices than the non-expert English language teachers. Further, there was a significant difference in the subject matter knowledge of literary devices between the competent and novice English language teachers.