In yesterday's diary, I wrote about the problem of getting aliterate (as opposed to illiterate) high school students to read the literature assigned as part of their English Language Arts courses, and to become better readers in the process. The hardest part is getting them to take a reader-centered, as opposed to a text-centered, approach to the reading experience; to put the burden of comprehension, interest, interpretation and appreciation on themselves instead of on the text being read.
Focusing on whether one "likes" or is "interested in" a book or its subject matter is useful when you're shopping for books, selling, marketing or recommending books, if you're a writer or if you're in the publishing business. It is not useful if you're a student taking a course in English Language Arts. High school kids, of course, may be overly concerned with whether they "like" a particular book or are "interested in" its subject matter, a judgment they may very well make before reading page one. My response to that was always one of abject indifference; to neither validate nor invalidate the opinion. In my view, it was simply immaterial, not part of the equation; not part of the requirement, not part of the objective, not part of the assessment, not our purpose and not our goal. Our goal is to learn how to study literature, and to accomplish that goal, we will study this particular text together so that we may have a common frame of reference as we learn. If you "like" it, or find it "interesting," that's great, but it's neither necessary nor required.
Too often in my experience, students would decide out of hand that they "didn't like" or were "not interested in" a particular text, and immediately they would reach an impasse, because there is nowhere one can go from there. The syllabus remains the same, the requirements remain the same, the standards remain the same, and the course continues unabated. The student therefore has to make a choice. He can either choose to remain at an impasse and accept whatever academic consequences derive from that choice, or he can choose to break the impasse by setting aside his subjective opinions and focusing instead on the task at hand, taking and learning to take a reader-centered approach to the study of literature.
As I wrote yesterday, this is far and away the hardest part. Few things are as difficult as getting adolescents to undertake a task they find unpalatable and in which they see no initial value. But it is essential that they get over this initial hump, because once they do, they can start to learn how to become skilled readers.
Also in yesterday's diary, I began discussing the difference between skilled and unskilled readers; specifically, what skilled readers do, and what unskilled readers do that prevents them from being and becoming skilled readers. Today I'd like to propose a few more comparisons between the two, to illustrate how unskilled readers can become skilled readers once they take a reader-centered approach.
* Unskilled readers place the burden of comprehension on the text. Skilled readers place the burden of comprehension on themselves.
* Unskilled readers who encounter difficult, challenging or unfamiliar language ("DCUL") in a text see it as an insurmountable obstacle to reading and understanding that text, and give up. Skilled readers see DCUL as an opportunity to learn that language, see it as their responsibility to learn it, take steps to learn it, and become more fluent in English.
* Unskilled readers are binary thinkers; skilled readers are open-ended thinkers.
* Unskilled readers ask themselves, "Do I understand this text or not?" Skilled readers ask themselves, "What is my understanding of this text?"
* Unskilled readers regard "understanding" as an event, and an absolute prerequisite to any subsequent action, including thinking, writing and discussion about the text. Skilled readers regard "understanding" as a process, of which thinking, writing and discussion about the text is the objective and result.
* Unskilled readers confuse "understanding" with translating English into English, and often need someone else to do that for them. Skilled readers have no such need; they derive meaning from language, rather than try to "translate" it.
* Unskilled readers, when they struggle with a text, declare that they are helpless and ask someone else to provide an understanding for them. Skilled readers, when they struggle with a text, ask questions to build upon and develop their own understanding.
* Unskilled readers rely on the text to "interest" them. Skilled readers seek, and take, an interest in whatever they happen to read.
* Unskilled readers categorically reject subject matter they are not already aware of, familiar with, and partial to. Skilled readers are open to, or actively seek out, new or unfamiliar subject matter and consider it an opportunity for learning.
* Unskilled readers tend to prejudge and limit their perception of a text based on its subject matter and their feelings about that subject matter. Skilled readers are less concerned with subject matter than with the process, objectives, and value of reading.
* Unskilled readers are primarily concerned about what they read; skilled readers are primarily concerned with how they read.
* Unskilled readers, when they are given a reading assignment, are primarily concerned with finishing it, with being done; they count pages and measure the thickness of the assigned reading segment, pay attention to how much is left, watch the clock, and think about how long the reading will take. Skilled readers pay no mind to the time, or the length of an assignment; they let the reading take however much time it takes, and are primarily concerned not with finishing, but with reading well.
There are more comparisons to be made, and I'd welcome more examples in the Comments section.
All of these comparisons are consistent with the reader-centered approach to reading, which skilled readers typically take, and the text-centered approach taken by unskilled readers. They also reflect three out of the four characteristics of skilled readers: fluency, curiosity and patience. The fourth, imagination, is harder to pin down in terms of identifying a specific behavior, of identifying what readers do. Moreover, unskilled readers don't necessarily lack imagination; if anything, they lack the ability to use it as a component of the reading experience. And imagination is of little use to an unskilled reader who lacks fluency, curiosity and/or patience.
I can't say that I found over the years that high school students lacked one of these qualities more than the others. Most unskilled readers I encountered lacked all three to one degree or another. I think, though, that improved curiosity and patience could lead to improved fluency; they could even make up for a shortage of fluency. Not so much the other way around.