On savvy reading

ABSTRACT

This essay uses the metaphor of “savvy travelling” to discuss the limitations and problems associated with three current “best practice” approaches to the reading of literature in upper grade levels, particularly in the United States: close reading, response-based reading, and disciplinary literacy. A “savvy” approach to reading and reading instruction combines close attention to the text, readers’ intuitive responses, and concepts from cognitive science, cultural studies, and literary theory in a narrative approach that identifies and compares the story in the text to the story of the text. Two examples from classroom practice are presented and analyzed to identify elements of savoir faire in each. Identification of these elements leads to a method of savvy reading whose goal is to produce students who will become savvy world travellers of texts on their own: readers who are autonomous, flexible, and able to read carefully and responsibly across a wide range of contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• New Criticism
• disciplinary literacy
• close reading
• Reader Response
• new Cambridge criticism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Dressman

Mark Dressman is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, and Professor and Chair of English at Khalifa University, UAE. He has taught English as a first and second language for more than 40 years and is the author of Let’s Poem (Teachers College Press 2010) and editor of the Handbook of Informal Language Learning (Wiley, 2019).

Dingxin Rao

Dingxin Rao, is a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Education at Zhejiang University, China, and a former visiting scholar in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His doctoral research focuses on the history of Chinese literature curriculum and instruction during the Republican period, 1911-1949.