Reader Response Using Short Stories: A Comparison of Knowledge-Telling and Knowledge-Transforming Processes

Abstract

Due to their nature of being brief, short stories have been successfully used in language-based classrooms. Discussions about the issues in the short stories can develop learners’ critical abilities. This can be done through activities like reader response. One of the many activities from reader response is writing. Learners are asked to write comments about the short story based on their interpretation. According to Bereiter & Scardamalia (1987), the ability to re-tell knowledge and transform knowledge is what differentiates between a novice and an expert writer. Knowledge-transforming is more difficult as it involves the writer to create new knowledge and this involves problem-analysis and perhaps even suggestions for solutions to the mentioned problems. This study is done to investigate learners’ perception of their reader response writing activity on short stories. It explores how learners perceive the knowledge-telling process and knowledge-transform process in the reader response. This quantitative study is done to explore the relationship between elements of short story with knowledge-telling and knowledge-transforming writing process. 106 students were randomly chosen to respond to the survey. Findings showed that the content of the short stories benefitted the learners in several ways. Findings also revealed positive relationships between the elements of knowledge-telling and even knowledge-transforming process. The findings in this study bear interesting implications in the teaching and learning of language using short stories.