“Plain sense” and “poetic significance”: tenth-grade readers reading two poems

Harker, W. John

doi:10.1016/0304-422x(94)90005-1

Cited by 29 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Arguably, these 'ordinary readers' are downplaying the distinctively literary aspects of the poetry reading experience, expressing their uncertainties and lack of confidence, but nevertheless seem to have found the difficulty of the poem worthy of more concentrated attention than would normally be given to a nonliterary text. Harker's (1994) high school readers are similarly reported to miss the literariness of the texts they read in their anxiety to establish basic propositional meaning. De Beaugrande's paper as a whole gives an interesting snapshot of a stage in the development of literary competence, and of course many readers will never even achieve this level of appreciation.…”

Section: De Beaugrande (1985) Poetry and The Ordinary Readermentioning

confidence: 88%

Literature in Language Education

Hall

2015

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Research and Practice in Applied Linguistics Series Standing Order ISBN 978-1-403-91184-1 hardcover 978-1-403-91185-8 paperback (outside North America only)You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above.

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Section: De Beaugrande (1985) Poetry and The Ordinary Readermentioning

confidence: 88%

Literature in Language Education

Hall

2015

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“…Yet, those inexperienced in literary reasoning-herein termed novice readers -are instead more likely to engage in literal sense making, with a focus on surface features of short stories, poetry, and other literary texts 1 (Culler, 2002 ;Peskin, 1998 ;Rabinowitz, 1998 ;Scott & Huntington, 2007 ). Experienced readers, however, are more likely to engage in figurative sense making, connecting salient details of a text, and constructing thematic interpretations about human nature and the role of the individual in the world (Dorfman, 1996 ;Harker, 1994 ;Janssen, Braaksma, & Rijlaarsdam, 2006 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Interpretation Visible With an Affect-Based Strategy

Levine

2014

Read Res Q

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Experienced readers of literature are more likely than novices to identify aspects of text that are salient to literary interpretation and to construct figurative meanings and thematic inferences from literary texts. This quasi‐experimental study explores the hypothesis that novice readers can be supported in constructing literary interpretations by drawing on and applying everyday interpretive practices to their readings. Specifically, an everyday affect‐based practice can serve as an interpretive heuristic to support the move from a local summary to a range of figurative interpretations. The affect‐based interpretive heuristic involves identifying language in a literary text that a reader feels is particularly affect‐laden, ascribing valence to that language, and then explaining or justifying those ascriptions. In a four‐week, classroom‐based instructional intervention, a 12th‐grade class from a high‐poverty, low‐achieving, urban high school practiced this interpretive heuristic as they read literary texts. A comparative class also engaged in a unit of literary interpretation but did not use the heuristic. Analysis of a pre‐ and poststudy interpretive writing task and clinical think‐aloud protocols from both groups showed that students receiving the intervention made gains in interpretive responses, whereas the comparison group did not. The results suggest that explicit instruction in affect‐driven interpretive heuristics can support novice readers in constructing interpretive readings of literary texts.

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“…After all, a number of think-aloud studies have investigated the ways college and pre-college students read poetry (Dias, 1986;Eva-Wood, 2004a, 2004bHarker, 1994;Hoffstaedter, 1987;Knapp, 2002;Shimron, 1980;Svensson, 1987;Viehoff, 1986). Taken together, these studies paint a vivid picture of how students first read poetry as odd-looking prose before learning over time to apply the reading conventions that are foundational to expert poetry reading.…”

Section: Expert Poetry Readingmentioning

confidence: 94%

“Generic” and “Specific” Expertise in English: An Expert/Expert Study in Poetry Interpretation and Academic Argument

Warren¹

2011

Cognition and Instruction

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In this study, eight English professors thought aloud as they read four lyric poems and composed a short text proposing a hypothetical talk about them for a professional conference. The study used a crossed design in which participants read a poem in each of the following conditions: familiar to them and close to their professional writing, familiar and far, unfamiliar and close, unfamiliar and far. When reading familiar poems, participants produced longer protocols and more elaborate interpretations. When planning their conference talks, participants produced longer protocols for poems that were far from their professional writing as they struggled to access sufficient background knowledge. Participants attempted to say something "new" about the poems, and they closely monitored the limits of their knowledge. These results suggest that English professors, just like experts in other disciplines, develop both "generic" and "specific" expertise. Implications for expertise research, literature instruction, and academic literary scholars are considered.

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“Plain sense” and “poetic significance”: tenth-grade readers reading two poems

Cited by 29 publications

References 15 publications

Literature in Language Education

Literature in Language Education

Making Interpretation Visible With an Affect-Based Strategy

“Generic” and “Specific” Expertise in English: An Expert/Expert Study in Poetry Interpretation and Academic Argument

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