Reading: the student experience

All the articles in this issue relate, in one way or another, to reading: reading the world and the word, in Freire’s formulation. They also, in different ways, address the student experience of English studies, and the relation of this to identity and authenticity. Each paper offers a specific account of the nature and purpose of reading, but all relate the reading process to context and culture.

Theresa Gooda’s poem Question Time evokes a (to me) authentic classroom experience. The teacher’s challenge ”Well?” attempts to assert her authority and to open an exchange of ideas, but the word hangs in the air and the students “drown collectively in the silence”. When the bell rings, the students rejoin their contemporaries; but the teacher braces herself against a shudder of misgiving about her purpose and identity.

Claire Lawrence examines trainee teachers’ internal conflict between the value of “authentic” reading and the demands of external assessment. Alarmed that her trainee secondary school English teachers wish to instruct pupils in a reductive approach to literature, she explores their experience and understanding of authentic engagement and their reluctance to encourage this in the lessons they teach. She presents a case study of their responses to an exemplar poetry lesson that attempted to encourage an authentic rather than manufactured response. While the teachers enjoyed the experience of this lesson, finding it “engaging” and thought-provoking”, they remained hesitant about its validity within the contemporary classroom.

Ian Cushing discusses a way of exploring literary texts by a grammar that builds upon what students already know about the world. Cognitive stylistics posits that texts typically consist of multiple “attractors” that work together to produce various conceptual effects. Readers’ responses are shaped by their growing understanding of the language of the text and are anchored to this understanding. In the lessons observed, students noticed, for example, that the choice of verbs creates an intense focus on the soldier in the poem. Cushing suggests that the textual attractor model allows readers to describe their reading experiences in systematic ways, making consistent reference to the text under discussion.

Louise Chapman’s students appear naive readers of prose fiction, but they use their chosen modalities to make sense of what Alexa Muse calls the “figured world” of adolescence. Chapman investigated the reading lives of 23 female students at a single-sex school in the south-east of England. Many of her respondents regarded print novels as “boring” if they lacked “relatable” themes such as “being a teenager and relationships and growing up and stuff”. However, in their reading logs, and when designing their ideal bookshelves, they extended the concept of reading to include social media, including video bloggers. Chapman suggests ways in which teachers might engage with the reading experiences of teenagers who are not bookish in any traditional sense.

Mark Dressman and Dingxin Rao offer a concept of “savvy reading” that mediates between traditional disciplinary approaches and the reader’s savoir-faire. They examine three theoretical formulations that govern the teaching of literature in upper-grade levels, particularly in US high schools. They argue that each is equally limiting and will not by itself develop the skills and resourcefulness of a truly savvy reader. Examples of classroom practice highlight teaching and learning situations where none of the three traditional paradigms is in itself adequate for the interpretive work required. Their account of the agency of the text chimes in some respects with Cushing’s. A savvy reader, the authors conclude, will find stories both in and of texts.

Chin Ee Loh, Baoqi Sun and Shaheen Majid surveyed nearly 5000 Singaporean students to provide a more complex and nuanced account of adolescent reading preferences than is usually given. The study found that both genders preferred to read for pleasure (a category that could include non-fiction and online reading) than for “functional” reasons, and their reading tastes concurred in areas such as Adventure and Science Fiction and Fantasy. Gendered differences in enjoyment of genres such as horror, science fiction and fantasy were quite small. Overall, the study confirms the finding of other recent research that students’ enjoyment and amount of reading are related most importantly to socio-economic background.

Alexa Muse’s paper reminds us of the connection between English studies and the development of authentic life and identity. Muse conducted a 17-week self-narrative portfolio project with Turkish and international students of English in a school in Ankara. She asked her students to explore the contexts of their learning through several pieces of autobiographical writing and a photography project. Becoming aware of the “figured world” within which they found themselves and the “situated voices” of their culture helped the students gain awareness of and think critically about the worlds both around them and within them. Muse’s feedback helped students fine-tune the signs and symbols of language in authoring their lives.

The range of approaches to reading and the conceptual depth of these papers highlight the importance of professional memory in English teaching. Simon Gibbons’ review of Paul Tarpey’s book Developing Professional Memory: A Case Study of London English Teaching 1965–1975 reminds us of the years of fruitful development in theory and practice that formed the basis of much of the work recorded in the 57-year history of this journal. As Tarpey suggests, such memory may enable those working today to reconceptualise the teaching of English and the nature of professionalism. The contents of this issue suggest that this is no vain ambition.