Literature-Based Reading Instruction:

Some Promises and Challenges

Presented before Students of the Graduate Program – IKIP Bandung

March 1999

Literature-Based Reading Instruction:

Some Promises and Challenges

 I. Introduction

            According to Shannon's (1989) observation, in over 90% of today's American classrooms, students' reading and writing activities are conducted based on a sequence of lessons determined by textbook  writers , who are unfamiliar with learners in schools (cited in Scharer & Detwiler, 1992).  In line with this, Smith (1992) makes the following generalization:

Teachers, from elementary to high school, instruct students to read to find out what others, namely the textbook authors, deem important. ...Teachers create guide questions (and tests) which force students to adhere strictly to the format, style, and contents of their textbooks (p.630).

          Whereas the popularity of "basal readers" (i.e., in this context, teaching materials prepared by outsiders) is clearly reflected in the quotes above, reading instruction programs that rely heavily on that type of prepackaged-reading materials have been criticized from many angles. For instance, Scharer and Detwiler (1992), citing a number of researchers, have noted the following as the targets of criticism: controlled vocabulary that results in stilted, unnatural language patterns; too many literal questions  following single stories; isolated written work that is oftentimes irrelevant to stories that are read; and workbooks with confusing directions and illustrations. 

Being aware of the unfortunate situation, some educators have begun to search for alternative teaching materials and approaches. One option is using literature-- real books that are written for general public (i.e. real readers in real life)--  as the content of reading.

            This paper will (1) elaborate on current theories of reading process in general and reading imaginative literature in particular, (2) discuss potential advantages of using literature in reading  and challenges that might face classroom teachers, and (3) propose some practical suggestions for classroom use.

II. Reading Acts: 3 Perspectives

2.1  Reading as transmission

            Prepackaged teaching materials-based reading instruction is based on a model of reading as transmission. In this transmission model, reading is perceived as finding out what the text means. The meaning is within words, readily available, and the job of the reader is to find and retrieve it from the text (Weaver 1988).

            In other words, the text is thought of as "self contained", and the reader is ,therefore, a passive participant without contributions in the comprehension process.

            Based on this perspective, the main objective of reading instruction is to impart to the learners sets of skills to enable them to extract the meaning, namely information from the text. It follows that teachers teach their students "to relate reading with correctness" (Darren J. Smith, 1992:630).

             According to Darren J. Smith's (1992) observation, over time this model of reading instruction can lead learners to approach all reading halfheartedly because reading becomes the transmission of information that is mediated by the teacher.

2.2  Reading as transaction

            Contrary to the model of reading as transmission, that implies passivity of the readers' mind when comprehending a text and one-way nature of reading process-- originating in the text and ending in the reader--, empirical studies by psycholinguists and sociolinguists have shown that meaning does not reside within the words on the page (Weaver 1988). In comprehending a text, the readers actively create meaning, and in so doing they bring into the text their background knowledge about the topic, about socio-psycholinguistic conventions (e.g. genre scheme, discourse structure, and story grammar as appropriate, etc.), and their intentions, expectations and purposes of reading, their values and beliefs that they already have in mind (Smith 1988; de Fina et al, 1991).  Therefore, meaning is not contained in the text, but is derived from the interaction between the content and the structure of the authors' message and the experiences and prior knowledge of the reader.

            In other words, reading is not a one-way process, but a two-way transaction (hence the term "transaction model") between the mind of the reader and the language of the text (Weaver 1988).  Or, in Smith's (1988) words,

Reading--like writing and all other forms of thinking-- can never be separated from the purposes, prior knowledge, and feelings of the person engaged in the activity, nor from the nature of the text being read (p.179).

            As experience, feelings, and reading purposes can vary from one individual reader to another, reading is necessarily a subjective-personal engagement of an individual reader with his/her whole-self in transaction with the text, both literary and otherwise. As Probst (1988) puts it, literary experience is "fundamentally an unmediated private exchange between a text and a reader" (p.7).  As a result, comprehension is relative (Smith 1988), because, basically, every interpretation of literary work is an idiosyncratic reconstruction of the "original" work as a result of dialectic interaction between the message in the text and an individual reader in a particular internal-state and reading context (Clifford 1991).

            Based on this model of reading, the function of reading instruction  is to ensure that learners have adequate opportunities to experience and process the reading for personally meaningful purposes, and to help them fulfill such purposes by themselves (Smith 1988; Probst 1988). In this way, learners are encouraged to be fully engaged, both their mind and spirit, with (literary) texts (Probst 1990).

III. Literature and literary understanding

            Purves at al (1990) define literature as a work of art that "seeks to please the person who made it and the person who attends to it" (p.11).  Literature is what the reader perceives and responds to as one. They further suggest  that literature is anything that evokes responses from readers, listeners, and/ or onlookers. It can, therefore, take a variety of media: written texts (e.g. short stories, novels, poems, drama, etc.) and pictorial-graphical representations (e.g. caricatures, drawings, caligraphies, etc.), audio-visuals such as those presented on TV and Video, and those packed through sound arrangement. It follows that responses from "readers" are also variable and multi-formal: oral and written verbal (e.g. oral responses, dramatic reading, written responses, etc.), visual non-verbal (e.g. pantomime, pictorial illustrations, etc.), etc.

            The central point here is the "reader" or  "literary experiencer"-- the importance of literature is what the reader feels important; its meaning is in what feelings are evoked  and associations that can be made by the reader as the result of literary encounter (Bleich 1975).

            From this perspective, it is clear that the reader plays a very active role in making sense of (or, perhaps more accurately, assigning meaning to) the literary work being experienced. Literary experience is both personal as well as social (Bleach 1957). It is a personal act because the response that a reader makes is to be used to take care of private feelings. It is also called social because when the reader is constructing her/his response s/he does it with an eye toward her/his intended (potential) reader/ listener. Along the same line, Chase and Hynd (1987) have made this conclusive remark:

The act of reading, thus, engages the reader both in highly personalized schema which guides idiosyncratic reactions to text and in a more public schema reflecting one's position in a community of readers shaped by mutually agreed upon values, tastes, and opinions (p.530).

3.1  Literature and the reading process

            British psychologist Barbara Hardy (1968) has theorized, as cited in Huck (1990), that all human being's constructs of reality are in fact stories that we tell ourselves about how the world works. Along the same line, Smith (1988) maintains that "human brain is essentially a narrative device. It runs on stories" (p.178).

            If narrative (hence literature) is a basic way of organizing experience and is a primary act of mind, we can safely assume that literary works can serve perfectly well as fuel for the reading process, because the reading process, according to Goodman (1970) as cited in Huck (1990), is " a constant search for meaning" (p.126).  And when students are led to see that they have a role in determining meaning they become more actively involved in reading (Brozo 1988).

            In other words, literature would contribute to the reading process for its meaningfulness. And meaningfulness, according to Smith (1988), is the basis for all learning.

3.2  Why literature-based: Some potential values

            Literature, as suggested in preceding paragraphs, is the repertoire of all mankind's concerns. And when literature is read, it draws the reader into events, and invites her to reflect on her perception of the literary events and associations evoked as a result of the literary encounter (Probst 1988).  Probably, the most valuable advantage of using literature in a reading program is the literary experience that learners go through-- pleasant experience in reading that might in turn make them "hooked on the book" ( Huck 1990: 127).

            Probst (1990) maintains that literary experience can result in five types of literary knowing: knowledge of self, of others, of texts, of contexts, and knowledge of processes.

            (1) Knowledge of Self   Normal literary reading, that is conducted by a normal person as a free citizen under normal circumstances, is usually driven by personally meaningful purposes. In other words, in general, people read literature for themselves. As they encounter ideas or visions or experience that is presented in or evoked by a literary work, the readers have the opportunity to balance them against their own perceptions, prejudices, attitudes or values. This literary event can lead the readers to reflect on their own selves. Or, in Probst's (1988) words, literary reading "allows us [readers] to experience and reflect upon experience, and thus invites self-indulgence of those who seek to understand themselves..." (p.4).

            (2) Knowledge of Others   As suggested in the preceding paragraphs, (great) literature demands reflection upon and reexamination of one's own attitudes and perceptions. It invites participation and judgment from the part of the "readers."  It gives them the opportunity to test perceptions against those of author, characters, and other readers. From this type of confrontation, it can be expected that readers (i.e. students) will learn how other people, including their "reading buddies," react to certain situations and/or events.

            (3) Knowledge of Texts  From their literary experience-- living through and talking about literature--  students will learn how texts suggest values and beliefs; how texts  "push" them, subtly or obviously, to accept the writers' assumptions and ideas. From this students can learn to draw inferences about values and assumptions in literary works.

            (4) Knowledge of Contexts  Through discussion of their personal responses (feelings, life associations, and intertextual relations, etc.) to literary work they have read, students will inevitably find differences among themselves. This can lead to awareness of the role of contexts (both personal-internal sate and general circumstances in which the text is read) in shaping the literary reading. This is possible because, consciously or unconsciously, the students know that all discourse takes place in, and to some extent is dependent upon, a context. This knowledge will help widen their horizons and make them tolerant about possible varying literary interpretations.

            (5) Knowledge of Processes   Good literature instruction can provide rich literary experience. Informed teachers would open up a wide range of possibilities of literary responses (e.g. oral/written verbal; non-verbal  audio and audio-visuals , etc.)  and  a lot of room for personal exploration. From exposure to rich demonstrations of  multiformal and multifunctional nature of literary expressions and their responses that they observe and experience directly or indirectly, the students will learn the process of how their own feelings and thoughts emerge and take shape.  

            According to Probst (1990), there are two different but equally legitimate processes for making meaning of literary texts: expressive-introspective and inferential-explicative. The former looks into affects (emotions, feelings), life as well as intertextual associations, and thoughts awakened by the reading

( c.f. Bleich 1975). This process might lead the readers to formulate their response in the form of personal narratives or journals exploring memories evoked as a result of the literary encounter, and/or in the form of imaginative literary work of their own.  The latter, inferential-explicative process, leads the readers to enter into the text making critical analysis, writing essays on the basis of their own understanding of the work being read.

            Being aware of the subtly differing ways of approaching literary texts and the processes for creating meaning from them would enrich students' repertoire of reading strategies and would, therefore, make them better readers or "experiencers" of literature.

3.3  Challenges for classroom teachers

            As suggested in the early part of this paper, textbook authors have been doing most of the teaching preparation work for classroom teachers: sequencing learning materials, formulating questions, evaluating learners' learning progress, and any other instructional services. This might have happened for decades and had a deep root in our day-to-day professional practice.

            However, considering its disadvantageous effects, if we are really concerned about what students can actually benefit from reading instruction, it is high time that we started focusing our attention to the students' learning. The potential advantages of using literature as the content of reading as discussed in this paper will not materialize until they are translated into sound instructional practice. And to do that, there are some challenges to be faced and resolved. They are, among other factors, accountability, classroom management, literacy supports, and professional-collegial supports.

            (1) Administrative and academic accountability

            In most cases, curriculum is determined by people other than classroom teachers (e.g. people in the office of Ministry of Education, etc.). In this sort of situation, classroom teachers would normally be held accountable for what they have taught through evaluation of students' skills, perhaps using a standardized test format that is developed based on the notion of reading as transmission. The real challenge here lies in the fact that while we are concerned about students' development as independent (literary) readers and experiencers, the test format would require classroom teachers to get students prepared to be evaluated in terms of their knowledge of information about literature: periods of literary history, classifications of genres, titles of literary works and their authors, major characters involved in the story, etc.

            I believe that in this case we should take care of both of them. That is, to promote students' confidence in their own interpretive capabilities by putting them as equal participants in every literary discussion or cultural dialogue (Probst 1990), and to get them familiar with literary information by allocating a special occasion to talk about it in the context of literary discussion.

            (2) Classroom management

            By "classroom management" I mean the activities of how classroom teachers set up and facilitate learning process in the classroom. This consists of three mutually dependent variables: students, reading materials, and learning tasks (or activities).

            In order to encourage students to become independent readers and experiencers of literature, so that they can gain knowledge of self, of others, of texts, of contexts, and knowledge of processes as discussed in the preceding paragraphs, teachers should not only abandon the old practice of being totally dependent on the prepackaged teaching materials and guides which are prepared by outsiders (and are , therefore, unlikely relevant to individual students' interests and concerns), but should also make adjustments in terms of learning materials, learning-teaching activities and student-teacher role relationships. In this case, the students should be put at the heart of instructional endeavors: their role is  a real literary reader and experiencer, equals to that of their teacher; their reading materials are real literary works (e.g. classic, contemporary, adolescent literature in various genres, and those literary works by minority ethnic groups and female writers, etc.); and its learning-teaching format of activities must be multiformal and functional-- reading, talking, and writing about literature as people normally do outside the classroom.

            (3) Provision of literacy supports

            By the term literacy supports I mean supports in terms of both collection of literary readings (preferably multiple copies of every literary work), and other forms of literary work, and a "literacy club"-- a group of reading-writing buddies with whom an individual student as well as teacher members can comfortably share their reading and writing experiences, and their perceptions about literary works in particular, and cultural phenomena in general. With these supports, I believe that the members can become "hooked on books" and develop as avid readers and writers, and as active participants in the dialogue of the culture (Probst 1990).

            (4) Professional-collegial supports

            Given that reading and writing are mutually supportive (Tierney & Leys cited in Tompkins & Hoskisson 1991; Weaver 1988), in order to enhance students' optimal development in reading and writing, a deliberate coordination between teachers of reading and writing becomes a necessity. For instance, regular literary discussions and written responses conducted and produced in the literature-based reading class can be a good start for a writing-for-publication activity in the writing class.

IV. Conclusion and suggestions

            Reading instruction that relies totally on prepackaged materials that are developed based on invalid theoretical assumptions through mass production by people who are unfamiliar with the learners that would use them has serious shortcomings: it is anti-theoretical and counterproductive. Anti-theoretical because the way the teaching is conducted and the materials are developed is based on unsound theoretical assumptions. Counterproductive because it  misleads the learners to the misconception that reading is finding "correct answers."  The problems here are, therefore, two folds-- at the theoretical level, and its practical consequences as a result of its application.

            As an alternative, I have proposed literature as the content of reading, with theoretical foundations from socio-psycholinguistic research studies (hence research based). As suggested in preceding paragraphs, a piece of work, literary or otherwise, is never meaningful nor complete in itself because it is full of gaps. It is meaningful only after a reader assigns meaning to it. It is complete only after a reader fills the gaps with her/his background knowledge (about the topic, about how reading works, about how to use strategies, about psycho-sociolinguistic conventions), her/his reading purposes, and contexts (physical, psychological, as well as ideological) (Clifford 1991; Beach and Marshall 1990; Smith 1988; Duffy & Roehler 1987).

            Reading is thinking and feeling (Bleich 1975). Given that interpretation is an interaction between the reader's background knowledge, text, and reading situation, interpretive reading is necessarily personal-subjective. As a reading act is personal, its impacts in the form of both emotional reaction and intellectual knowledge are also personal in that they tend to be colored by idiosyncratic nuances and variants.

            Considering the nature of subjective interpretation and the nature of literary work, whose main function is to entertain human emotion, literature cannot be perceived as an objective reality  per se that should be approached with detachment and "dead feelings" (or "objectivity"). Rather, it should be enjoyed as human experience, subjective experience. Because there is no such thing as literary work unless there is a subject, or a reader, who perceives the piece of work as literature (Bleich 1975).

            Taking all of the points above into consideration, we should acknowledge the personal significance of literary experience by inviting the readers (call them "students") to respond to literature with personal associations, memories, judgments, and intertextual relations (Bleich 1975, Probst 1990, Purves et al 1990).

            In order to translate this pedagogical spirit into instructional activities, I am proposing the following suggestions.

            o Acknowledge that students personal responses are valid

            One way to translate this into classroom activities is as follows: every time students have literary encounter, ask them to share their feelings (e.g. like , dislike, etc.), to relate the work or the feelings evoked by it with their life experience, and with other texts they might have ever read. Teachers should put themselves as classroom members and participate in the activity with equal role as participants: to share their feelings about the literary work, and make associations with their life experience and intertextual relations.

            o Provide students with a wide variety of literary works.

            To make students' literary experience as close as possible to real life reading, use materials which vary in difficulty, genres, topic, and length. In assigning individual reading, give individual students options so that they can pick one that is most appealing to them.

            o Create a nonthreatening classroom environment

             To foster their confidence and independence in processing literary experience and making personal response to literary work, students should feel free from fear of condemnation. To support this, teachers should be accepting, appreciative and encouraging in commenting on students' personal responses.

            o Use multiple media for expressing message   

             Introduce students with a variety of literary responses: written/oral verbal responses, dramatic reading, pantomime, collage, shape and/or concrete poems, illustrations, etc. Encourage them to experience expressing  their ideas using those media.

            o Create collaborative classroom climate

            Parallel to the subjectivity and communality of literary interpretations, encourage students to share their personal responses (both orally and in writing) with other readers. Establish a "reading-writing buddies"-- a literacy club that would enable learners to comfortably share their reading and writing experiences, and discuss both differences as well as commonalities of their literary interpretation. This can lead the students to the awareness that reading-writing involves the social act of communication as well as individual reflection. 

            o Foster awareness of personal and interpretive-community perspectives and then expose the students to other perspectives.

            Enter students into various literary experiences, and have them do "exploitative activities" in response to literature (through dialogue journals, process logs, reading responses, imitative writing as suggested by Andrasick [1990], multiformal literary responses as suggested by Purves et al [1990]). This can lead the students' to the understanding of others' interpretations in relation to personal interpretations. To make this happen, students should be given an adequate opportunity to share their experiences and thoughts, to encounter and have exposure to different perspectives, and to talk about them among themselves.

Works Cited

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