Social reading and literary engagement

Abstract

Abstract Previous research has shown that embedding a text in a socially meaningful context can help readers become more engaged with it as a piece of literary discourse. In order to determine whether a device called social reading can also facilitate literary engagement, 68 undergraduates read a short story aloud in either a social or a nonsocial condition. Social readers read the text to someone who had never heard it before with the intention of conveying the story's central meaning. Nonsocial readers read the story aloud to themselves with the intention of preparing for a later comprehension test. Miscue analysis showed that the social readers made a greater attempt to convey meaning than did the nonsocial readers. Social readers, however, were less engaged with the text as literary discourse, as indicated by agreement ratings with four theoretically‐derived statements. This lower level of engagement may have been due to the seemingly inevitable pressure associated with performing in front of someone else. The results are discussed in terms of differences between engagement and comprehension, and it is suggested that what has been learned about readers'comprehension of short, simple texts cannot fully account for the ways they engage themselves with literature.