Reconsidering Reading

RECONSIDERING
READING
• Reconsidering reading is many ways has many
implications for teaching of literature. First
anyone who has learned a language has years of
experience building theories about the ways
words work. Therefore many students have the
capacity to think about the language. Many
students have played with the language , which is
a rich and firm foundation for reading literature. .
How well students read is fed by the kinds of
questions they ask , the nature of the discussions
they are part of, the types of writing they do, and
the sort of responses their writing provokes.
• If the act for reading is , in fact , a matter of
thinking and feeding along any number of paths
at once , we are short changing students if all
we talk about is decoding or organizing the
structure of a text . We have the responsibility
to recognize and educate other reading
processes that frequently go understudied or
unnamed. These include the ways students
engaged with what they read , their reflections
of the reading process , and whether they think
about books as comments on , or questions
about the culture in which they live.
• Since reading is profoundly social and cultural s well as
cognitive and as development of expression , the
smallest other tasks or acts like reading assignments ,
commentary or reflection papers about the selection or
specific topic , or questions ask in class – are all infused
with a teachers’ particular view of language and reading.
Do away with reading and the language part will be
useless. But many of the readers in any classroom may
bring a quite different set of expectations and values to
a text. Rather than presuming views and values ,
teachers might , and perhaps ought to , use their beliefs
to challenge students to know their own theories and
values. What is literature for ? What is its importance to
our students’ academic life ? What is a reader supposed
to do ?
• Testimony:
• Increasingly there are classrooms where teachers, working with
students who vary in their expectations and abilities , are
thinking how they teach literature and reading . In the past
year I have spent teaching communication arts classes
( undergraduate level ) and applied linguistic classes ( graduate
school level ) at the same time , observing and interviewing
them to understand how they enabled student to think and
play with ideas as they read . Much time was spent with
students , asking them to think aloud as they read their
assignments for the next day and reading journal entries and
essays they wrote. I interviewed them about what they read ,
what they find troubling , interesting or hard when they read.
• In collecting those observation and interview
sessions , I have also worked with average
students . Nevertheless , most of the examples
were feature active ; committed teachers and
student would think out loud about reading . While
some of what they say is taken directly from
classroom exchanges , other portions were
collected in personal interviews . At the same time
the observations are not always of exemplary
moments , they are simply occasions when
teachers and students wrestle with important
questions about reading. . They are slices of
classroom interchange rich enough to provoke
discussion.
• On what things does learning to read literature
depend on? Many teachers and a number of
students demonstrated that learning to read
literature depends on the following : a) taking
part in a rich and varied language environment ;
b) learning how to engage with literature ; c)
interesting reading material and reflecting on the
process of reading it ; interesting reading material
and reflecting on the process of reading it ; and
d) participating in an on-going conversation
about the selection ideas and their accompanying
highlighted activities or discussion.
THE READING OF LITERATURE
• Actually, he teaching of literature is not an easy job
, although an enjoyable one , having defined aims
– the sharpening of reading skills already learned ,
in addition to the acquisition of new ones , the
expanding of reading interests , and , if possible ,
the developing of a habit of reading – and many
indefinable ones . The literature class should seek
to make readers that are more perceptive , more
critical , and more wide – ranging.
• These aims are complicated , however , especially in
the secondary school , by the growing range in
differences in reading ability and in the amount of
individual reading that has been done. Indeed , the
senior high school teacher faces a class of young
people who are in many respects “ young “ adults –
inhibited , complex , and ambivalent. Some of them
may be able to read only on a fourth of fifth- grade
level , whereas others may read as well as college
junior / or seniors are supposed to read. In so doing ,
teachers react to the heterogeneity of such a class in
various ways.

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RECONSIDERING

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