Purpose: Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism -- particularly the practice of close reading -- and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of…

Although a growing body of research and practice in reading strategy instruction in secondary education has identified specific and successful methods for encouraging metacognitive awareness, there is little published research connecting these findings to post-secondary literacy education. Consequently, a gap remains in the conception, and…

The tendency to think of a literary work as an object or entity existing apart from author and reader has been the greatest stumbling block in literary criticism and the teaching of literature. The transaction between a reader and a text involves the reader in a highly complex, ongoing process of selection and organization. Keeping the reader's…

Examines what teachers do when they read texts in particular genres, and suggests how to encourage similar behavior in students. (CRH)

Reading comprehension involves making connections between prior knowledge and the visual information on the page. To reduce uncertainty, the reader makes orthographic, syntactic, or semantic predictions. Thus, comprehension is relative, dependent on the answers to different readers' different kinds of questions. The reader does not record a…

This essay explores the concept of reader stance as defined by L. Rosenblatt (1978, 1994) as a useful framework from which to view the relative imbalance between the efferent and aesthetic reading of literature, particularly among schoolage adolescents. It then examines how 4 theoretical models and perspectives offer considerable explanatory…

Explores briefly the New Criticism that dominated literature instruction until recently and then provides an overview of reader response theory and how response approaches can be used in the classroom to enhance reading. (NKA)

Argues that when involving students in activities that require them to explore texts creatively, teachers should also make them inquire into their own reading processes--especially since the reading of literature helps the students to become aware of their own intellectual process if attention is focused on them reflexively. (HOD)

Argues that resisting reading, a kind of reading learned from recent feminist literary criticism, is a way of ensuring that learning about a foreign culture does not lead to the destruction of one's own identity. Students can read texts they are not sympathetic with because understanding does not mean accepting. (Author/VWL)

Based on the premise that the primary ways individuals make sense of the world is through observation, analysis, imagination, and feeling, this work suggests that through the use of graphics, students can experience these functions as they interact with reading and writing activities. Graphics encourage students to read more closely, make visual…

Considers what literature does, its role in a child's education, and how it might be taught. Advocates the use of adolescent literature in the classroom. (NKA)

Teachers should be making every effort to use approaches for teaching literature that encourage students to discover the meaning of a text for themselves, using the language of the text and without unnecessary teacher intervention. Therefore, rather than having the students be led by the teacher/interpreter through a work they encounter the first…

Considers literature as something different from the texts themselves (specifically, a way of reading that includes the writer, the text, and the reader) so that the purposes of teachers and readers may be considered, and a flexible approach to selection, organization, and pedagogy be permitted. (SRT)