Toward a pedagogically useful theory of literary reading

Abstract

Although many teachers have frustrating experiences teaching students to read literature, a more effective pedagogy cannot be developed until we develop a useful theory of reading and a body of research that will help us to answer some important unanswered questions. These questions include: (1) What do inexperienced readers expect from a literary text? (2) What reading strategies do students typically use? What reading strategies do expert readers use? How do non-expert readers develop expert strategies? (3) How do knowledge and attitudes affect reading comprehension? What kinds of literary knowledge do students need, and how does this knowledge affect comprehension? (4) How do problems of inferencing affect reading comprehension? What kinds of inferences (if any) are typically required to process literary texts? Research in cognitive psychology has shown us that reading is a creative, active, goal-oriented, problem-solving set of hierarchically-arranged recursive processes, some deliberate and others so over-learned as to be unconscious most of the time. This research, however, has not yet produced answers to the questions listed above, nor has it shown how reading behaviors than does reading folktales or expository/scientific texts. Although the cognitive model of reading has many affinities with current literary theory, especially the reader-response work of Wolfgang Iser, literary theory has three important problems. First, because many critics believe that meaning resides in the text, their theories cannot help us to improve our methods of teaching reading strategies to our students. Second, because reader response researchers such as Holland work outside a theory-based research paradigm, their work will not produce the kinds of knowledge needed to answer the questions listed above. Finally, the widespread reliance on ideal models (e.g., Iser's implied reader, Fish's normal reader) has important negative consequences for our beliefs about literature and thus for our pedagogy. We need a pedagogy and a model of literary reading that will show us how to help all our students to enjoy reading literature.