Topic/Subject area: How to Develop Literary Competence in the English Classroom
Author: Signe Mari Wiland, Associate Professor, Dr.Art. University of Agder
Introduction
This question is too comprehensive and complex to be answered in a single article, as the issues involved tap into the field of text selection, and therefore national curriculum plans and examinations, activities and group dynamics in a class, and the teacher personality monitoring the reading of literary texts in the classroom. Regardless of these obstacles, there seem to be some fundamental principles emerging from recent trends in literary theory that might contribute to enhancing the enjoyment of both teachers and learners in a class and thus create a natural basis for the development of literary competence. Since literary competence is to be developed in the learner of English, increased awareness on the part of the teachers about reader-response theories seems a sensible first step. The function of reader oriented theories is to liberate readers, also untrained young readers in school, from the constraints sometimes implicit in other literary theories. Without this theoretical back up we might be more reluctant to give up the traditional text-oriented stand that is still favoured by many teachers. This is the point of departure for the discussion of the first part of the article.
Not only theories are necessary to develop literary competence. Research on how foreign language learners actually respond to literature, and poetry particularly, may shed light on what approaches work well with learners of English and thus increase motivation for reading English, a necessary step to develop literary competence. Therefore the discussion about theory will be followed up by some response samples from my own research, Poetry: Prima Vista. Reader-Response Research on Poetry in a Foreign Language Context, including suggestions about approaches and procedures in the classroom.1 As far as possible I shall try to make connections between the theories, included here for their significance for all age groups, and the teaching of literature generally in the foreign language classroom.
From Richards to Rosenblatt
From the time of I. A. Richard's first audacious dive into the minds of real readers in 1929 and Louise M. Rosenblatt's transactional theory in 1938, both the strict text-oriented theories and author biographies have been challenged as the recommended best way for readers when they enter into the literary texts. Later, Wolfgang Iser, David Bleich, Norman Holland, and Stanley Fish have seriously questioned the traditional principles of text-oriented literary studies. Whether New Criticism, Marxism, structuralism, or feminism have really affected the foreign language classrooms in Norway is an open question. No consistent study has been made, but occasional reports from students seem to indicate that the teachers' interpretation, based on authorised criticism, is still the only valid answer to whose literary competence counts.
I. A. Richards' study is a bold attempt to take the readers seriously. Through his Cambridge students' written protocols of their reaction to English poetry he has access to their readings. Despite the fact that he in principle has opened up for the authority of the students, Richards is quite harsh on their individual interpretations if they fail to grasp what he thinks is the greatness of the text. "Some who appear to have read widely seem to make little or no endeavour to understand...Indeed, the more we study this matter the more we shall find ‘a love of poetry' accompanied by an incapacity to understand or construe it" (312-313). Even so he firmly believes that "this construing... is a craft, in the sense that mathematics, cooking, and shoemaking are crafts. It can be taught" (312-313). Dealing with native speakers of English only, Richards is astounded by the fact that very many of them had severe problems simply "making out the plain sense of poetry" (13-14). "They fail to make out its prose sense, its plain overt meaning, as a set of ordinary, intelligible, English sentences, taken quite apart from any further poetic significance" (13-14).
Richards does not go into any theoretical discussion about what linguistic problems cause these misreadings, but voices his concern for the future competence of students as regards reading and would like to see universities initiating courses in hermeneutics to amend these deficiencies. He clearly deplores the fact that so many of the protocols contain stock responses and pre-made judgements based on personal and private experiences that have nothing to do with the poem. Unless Richards' students have their anticipations confirmed, they seem to dislike the poem, which means poetry has no power to move, change or shock the readers. Richards believes in a product-oriented and text-based reading, but it is a more enlightened, cultivated and academic appreciation of poetry reading he would like to see realised in the protocols. Teachers' worries, then, about declining reading competence are not new. However, Richards' advice to teachers is to accept the misinterpretations with humility as part of our own possible misreading and accept them as a natural first step towards a greater command of the language and literature. "Sooner or later interpretation will have to be recognised as a key-subject. But only the actual effort to teach such a subject can reveal how it may best be taught" (338).
This is where teachers of English should be able to find comfort and be inspired. Each individual teacher has to investigate his/her own attitudes and methods critically to find out if the learners really are at the centre of the activities. Trying to teach interpretation may be a success on some conditions. The actual effort is crucial. When we as teachers invite young readers to participate in responding to literary texts and discussing them, do we really invite them? Do we really, truly wish to have all the confusing, wrong and immature readings exposed in class for us to take seriously? Are we mentally prepared to accept opinions that we have never anticipated? Are we willing to modify and change our own interpretation if we meet strong and mature arguments? Are we flexible enough to deviate from our lesson plan? Are we able to find viable methods to elicit responses in the first place, or do we resort to display questions only to have our own opinions confirmed, as Richards to a certain extent did? In order to boost our own competence or to hide our own deficiencies we might actually signal the opposite of what we think we do, and the curriculum plans expect us to do. We, as teachers, are namely also readers, non-native readers of the language, and also dependent on authorities, perhaps too dependent to create an open and inclusive atmosphere for sharing literature with young readers and develop their competence.
Interpretation is also Louise Rosenblatt's concern when she interpolates the concepts of openness and constraint between the text and the reader (x). These two concepts define and restrict the fundamental negotiation between the text and the reader, and are at the heart of Rosenblatt's transactional theory. Rosenblatt's balanced theoretical stand implies reconciliation between profound respect for the text and respect for the reader without making her project a "psychology of literature" (xiii). Her evocative image of the stage and the spotlight describes the modern language literature classroom quite accurately. Illuminating alternatively the author and the text, but seldom the reader, who has remained more or less invisible, Rosenblatt argues for a change (1). Rosenblatt claims that it is high time the spotlight is moved to the reader. For our purpose it is also important to include the learner reader, not only the teacher reader when Rosenblatt's stage image is translated into the literature classroom.
Another fruitful dichotomy in Rosenblatt's transactional theory is the efferent and aesthetic attitudes. Efferent means carry away and describes the kind of reading where the reader is carried away from the reading in the sense that the outcome, in the form of information and knowledge, is the most important aspect of reading. "In aesthetic reading, in contrast, the reader's primary concern is with what happens during the actual reading event" (24). The awareness of this continuum may help teachers to guide the learners in reading techniques that facilitate aesthetic reading, so that the efferent reading does not take over and thereby helps to undermine literature as an aesthetic expression of a work of art. For very many readers the efferent reading is the only one they seem to accept. No wonder this is the most frequent approach as there is usually something to be learnt from a text, even from a poem. In a textbook for children, a poem about a cow was followed up by this question: "What facts does this poem teach you?" (39) By such a question the attitude of the pupils was immediately turned into an efferent and fact-finding attitude. The pupils had already been deprived of the aesthetic reading attitude.
Very often textbooks and teachers together sabotage the aesthetic reading by introducing exercises and questions that are incompatible with the aesthetic reading attitude. When literary texts are accompanied by comprehension questions in order to check that the learners have understood the text, the textbook writer and the teacher using these questions silently subscribe to a simplistic and anti-aesthetic view of literature. Generally these questions tap into the action, plot and characters of the text, and more often than not, the questions can be answered by simply reading a plot summary. Aesthetic reading requires time, not comprehension questions, nor summaries. The same problem of confused readings can be seen as a result of the inclusion of adapted readers in textbooks for pupils, particularly in primary school, but occasionally also in lower secondary. After the introduction of English children's literature in L97 we witnessed abbreviated and simplified versions of classical children's books included in textbooks for use in schools (Ibsen and Wiland 100-103).
The temptation is obvious. These adapted and simplified versions lend themselves easily to efferent reading. The rationale for having them there is not to foster imaginative and aesthetic attitudes to literature, but to emphasise the referential use of language in a foreign language learning context, where efferent reading attitudes predominate. In any case an important element of language use is left out, namely the aesthetic and creative element. Maybe this element is included in other exercises and activities where other skills are practised. However, reading material should not exclude possibilities for aesthetic reading and lure the readers into texts that implicitly tell them that any text, book or novel can be deciphered in clear referential terms. The result of such a view is that the efferent reading attitude will be used no matter what book they are offered, no matter what poem they are presented with. Teachers will have a hard time unlearning that attitude and teach readers to appreciate intended ambiguity in fiction, drama or poetry, truly and lastingly. Literature should not be treated as a newspaper report or a recipe, from which exact information can easily and effortlessly be extracted. In a foreign language learning context it is crucial to reach the deeper cognitive layers of the learners in order to anchor language material profoundly and personally.
The Reading Experience
Stanley Fish takes up many of the ideas formulated by Rosenblatt, but he develops a reader concept that is quite narrow and not acceptable for our didactic purposes, as we are concerned with the development of the uninformed young reader (See "The Classroom Reader. The Dynamic Prospecting Countersignatory"). We would like our readers to become informed, though, and to be able to achieve this goal, maybe part of the theory presented by Fish may work wonders, as Fish himself allegedly claims in trying to define his theory or method. "In short, the theory, both as an account of meaning and as a way of teaching, is full of holes; and there is one great big hole right in the middle of it which is filled, if it is filled at all, by what happens inside the user-student" (67).
This cryptic quotation is not as enigmatic as it seems at first glance. Fish's method is an attempt to define, chart and understand the reading process as a means to enter into the reader's mind rather than to give prescriptions about literature. It is a justification to drop defences and be true to the first encounter with the text. This can easily be applied in the foreign language literature classroom if reading as an event is emphasised and the process of reading constitutes the meaning. Meaning is not a product to be found, but an experience to be had, an event, possible only because the reading experience is slowed down. This event is personal in the sense that no reader will experience the text exactly as another reader experiences it (28).
Pragmatic didactics is Fish's concern as he loosely defines theory as an account of meaning and a way of teaching. His questions involve value judgements on what literary texts are, or rather do, who the reader is, what language is and what communication implies. The premise is literature as experience, as an event, doing something with the reader, using language. The objective is to sensitise both learners and teachers for the workings of language during the act of reading literature. In this respect Fish taps into the dilemma of all form of communication or teaching, the receiving end and the human element that can never be theorised upon once and for all or be formulated in simple and instrumental methods. As a theory, reading as experience or event defines the confines of and attitude to rather than the nature of literature. As a method it is void of meaning and useless because it cannot be transferred, "its operations are interior", it "has no mechanism", it "processes its own user, who is also its only instrument" and it "does not organise materials, but transforms minds" (66).
Generally teachers do not favour methods that are not directly applicable or operational in a practical way in the classroom. Still the educational programme we are responsible for implementing is no less audacious in formulating precisely this kind of development and transformation of young minds. What Fish does is an operational merger between the definitions of theory and method for the practical purpose of doing things with texts, compatible to some extent with what has happened in foreign language learning where definite theories have been abandoned for the sake of enlightened eclecticism or methodics (Stern 29, 478, 482-486). No single theory can explain the complexity of learning a foreign language or generate methods that can solve the teacher's practical classroom problems. Defining the concepts is increasingly difficult with a growing awareness of the learner or reader's role in foreign language learning and literature reading respectively, without resorting to superficial psychologising. This is where Fish's contribution to the didactics of literature must be understood. He offers a moveable, theoretical and methodological approach to the teaching of literature where the focus is shifted from text to reader, and where the major concern is with expanding the minds of the readers, not with the accumulation of facts, conveyed by the teacher. Aims and means converge in a fruitful endeavour to make the readers grow within an educational and institutional frame.
What fascinates me, as a teacher, about Fish's description of his reader-response theory is the insistence on reading as a temporal experience, because "as a consequence the notion of a mistake, at least as something to be avoided, disappears" (159). Then every step through a poem or any other work of literature for that matter is error free and in itself part of the reading event. The tracing of steps becomes the essential experience in poetry reading, not the summing up of any particular sense encoded in the text to be had as an end result, comparable to Rosenblatt's efferent reading. Fish gives the learner credit for her experiences by claiming that "the reader's activities are at the center of attention, where they are regarded not as leading to meaning but as having meaning... for they include the making and revising of assumptions, the rendering and regretting of judgments, the coming to and abandoning of conclusions..." (158-159).
The temporality of reading thus accurately describes the research method I used in Poetry: Prima Vista and implicitly also defines my underlying assumption about interpretation as unavoidable as long as you go through a text. Needless to say, this method is valuable as a teaching method in the poetry classroom, and it has been tried out with success at various levels in the school system by experienced teachers and student teachers. In an experimental effort to freeze or "slow down the reading experience" (28), I handed out only one line of the poem at a time to my respondents. Not only were they deprived of spatially "stepping back from the text" (158) to form an opinion based on information found in the entire text, but they were asked to verbalise in writing the gradual encounter, unveiling itself with all the questions, uncertainties and anticipations which are part of a temporal approach. The written protocols are documented time spent on a reading activity that otherwise will very rarely surface in a school context. The respondents are invited to dwell as long as they like on a line and then ask for a new line when the reading activity is satisfactorily described in the protocols. In practical terms the poem was magnified and chopped up in separate lines to be distributed at an individual pace to each respondent. Before the students were handed out the poem they were given the following information:
Line-by-line reading → line by line reactions → interpretation
Your protocols → detailed reactions to each line: language, style, rhyme, rhythm, theme, emotions, anticipation, the process itself, introspection.
Use the line numbers to structure your process of reading, nothing else. Your protocols should reflect the "messiness" of the reading process. Arrows, circling etc. may be used.
The title: "maggie and milly and molly and may" (or the other poems in my research)
Poet: Name not given.
English/English dictionary may be used.
Young readers in the classroom are often asked to form an opinion about the meaning of a poem after once or twice having gone through it. For the majority of learners this is futile business because they are often not left with a clear interpretation. They have not been able to extract meaning from the poem. In addition, if they have, they fear it might be wrong. Besides they might already have forgotten where in the poem there seemed to be something attracting their attention during the reading process. Still they have experienced something, which the teacher may not be interested in, as their experience very often does not comply with the standard interpretation. What is praised in the traditional teaching context is the end result with answers well substantiated with references to the text and logically built up to secure the artistic unity of the poem. Confusion, uncertainty, and vacillation between two opposing conclusions are normally not accepted, even though this is how the reading event is experienced by most young readers, and even by members of Fish's interpretive community. To Fish there seems to be great interpretative profit from the fact that anticipations made while experiencing the text, have to be considered and reconsidered later in the process. Initial confusions finally contribute to a more informed understanding of the text. Fish favours the unexpected experience that probably abounds in the foreign language classroom and which forms the learners' reader identity. At least it does in my protocols, as the following sample material will show.
Readers Reading "maggie and milly and molly and may"
The reader identity, or foreign language learners' self awareness as readers, is important to chart and can be traced in some of my protocols. e.e. cummings' poem, "maggie and milly and molly and may"2 engages the respondents in a discussion about addressee or audience,3 and implicitly challenges their reader identities. The poem is described as a children's poem by most of the respondents. This observation has various implications for the attitude to it. TT4 (student teacher) starts out with a quite negative attitude to the poem. "It's alliteration with m and a. On the rhythm and on the words it looks like a children's poem. Reading this I expect more of the same rhythm, and some childish stuff about these girls" (MM: TT4: line 1). The respondent's attitude vacillates between contempt for having to read a boring and predictable children's poem and fascination by the unexpected language that can give the grown-up reader something to enjoy. Responding to line 10, the same respondent says:
A wonderful sentence!
Lots of as
As small as a world and as large as alone. Unexpected. This is no klisjé, this is quality. I love this sentence. It tells so much. And also using such a brilliant sentence tells the reader how marvellous and full of wonder may thinks this stone is. (MM: TT4: line 10)
At the end of the poem MM: TT4 is able to accept the poem as a valuable expression of life for both children and grown-ups. By doing so she bridges the gap between children's literature and literature for grown-ups and makes her own contribution to the discussion about what children's literature really is.
Oh, it's ourselves. That was a deep one. What is it supposed to mean? Did the young misses here find themselves? It could mean a lot, but maybe it just means that by the sea, there is time to do something different and stop to think about the little wonders in the world and in life. It's a quite nice poem. And after reading all of it I think it could give pleasure both to young and grown-up readers. It's a quite firm rhythm and rhyming, but not totally bound. Lots of alliteration makes the poem taste good in your mouth when you read it out loud. (MM: TT4: line 12)
Of the total of 8 student teachers (TT) and 8 upper secondary school students (S), 6 student teachers and 7 upper secondary school students describe the poem as a nursery rhyme or a children's poem. Some respondents deplore the fact that they, at their age, have to read a nursery rhyme, but are gradually confused by the unexpected complexity in the poem. When they approach the end, the majority of the respondents find that the poem is too "deep" or complicated to be "only" a nursery rhyme and consciously include an adult readership. MM: S8 sums up the confusing experience of reader identity that most of the respondents, regardless of age, express and which may explain some of the challenges pertaining to the teaching of poetry in primary and secondary schools.
I just realised that he used a capital letter for the first time in the last sentence. That changed the poem a bit.
But now that I have it all, what is it about? I don't get it. Is it about dreaming? The sea of countless dreams in which we always find our own?
I liked the poem. I'd read it for my kids without considering any deeper meaning. It's constructed in a way that has Made me forget about analysis and stuff. But I want to know what the guy (or girl) meant with it. It can be about finding ourselves. It says so, doesn't it? But wouldn't that be to easy? On the other hand he has written a nursery rhyme with intelligent remarks. I like it, but at the same time I hate it. I don't understand it. (MM: S8: line 12)
The love-hate relationship is a strong indication that the text has become a poem in Rosenblatt's terminology. "Not the words, as uttered sounds or inked marks on a page, constitute the poem, but the structured responses to them...the poem is lived-through during the reader's intercourse with the text" (14). It has evoked emotions as a result of an aesthetic reading attitude. This attitude is established because these readers have been able to define the text as a poem and agree to accept a reading contract where their attitudes change accordingly. When they take the role as child readers, some are offended and some are relaxed about it. When they change into an adult reading role, some are confused and some signal strong feelings of defeat. As the Knowledge Promotion expects the teachers to give learners individual treatment, the question of reader identity is important, particularly in a class with up to thirty individual readers. The lack of self-consciousness in young readers is a serious impediment to success in the literature and poetry classroom because developing literary competence to a great extent depends on self-esteem as a reader.
Whose Literary Competence Counts in the Classroom?
If any of the reader response theorists may be accused of developing "a psychology of literature", it is Bleich. However, he is also the one to take the real readers so seriously that he develops his theory of subjective criticism within a coherent and consistent epistemological framework. Last but not least, his work is based on real readers' response statements that can inspire classroom practice, because his aim is
to provide a means for presenting literature in a way that will produce an internal motive for reading and thinking about literature. This motive is the awareness that reading can produce new understanding of oneself - not just a moral here and a message there, but a genuinely new conception of one's values and tastes as well as one's prejudices and learning difficulties... A major assumption of this technique is that all people, young and old, think about themselves most of the time and think about the world in terms of themselves... The role of personality in response is the most fundamental fact of criticism...Our initial and most important aim is to produce an awareness of one's own personality; the explanation of it comes later. (Readings and Feelings 3-5)
Bleich claims that on a background, where "new truth is created by a new use of language and a new structure of thought"...and where "knowledge is made by people and not found" (Readings and Feelings 18), a platform is prepared for a new approach to literature and a different attitude to the learners who study it. Thus Bleich's description and introduction of authentic student response statements as a pedagogical method have relevance for the teaching of literature. The most conspicuous characteristic in the response statements, as opposed to literary analyses and commentaries, is the weight of associative emotional reactions, ignited by the language of the literary text. This is how Bleich defines it.
A response statement aims to record the perception of a reading experience and its natural, spontaneous consequences, among which are feelings, or affects, and peremptory memories and thoughts, or free associations. [...] Recording a response requires the relaxation of cultivated analytical habits, especially the habit of automatic objectification of the work of literature. (Subjective 147) [...] The response statement is a symbolic presentation of self, a contribution to a pedagogical community, and an articulation of that part of our reading experience we think we can negotiate into knowledge. (Subjective 167)
"The relaxation of analytical habits" enables the readers to drift into their personal life histories, a technique perhaps too similar to psychological therapy to be copied completely in the classroom, but still inspiring as it allows the readers to be engaged in themselves and creative activities.4
In modern foreign language learning theories, heavy emphasis is put on the need of the learners to communicate the foreign language in a meaningful context. If need and context are crucial to successful learning, this might explain why many teachers struggle hard in the poetry classroom. The need to understand English literature in the context of the foreign language classroom is in many cases absent, as young readers have no cognitive structures to attach literature to, and because they have no language of their own to describe the encounter with the literary or poetic text. The result is alienation. To counterweigh this unfortunate state and to supply teachers with a means to approach literature in the classroom in a more productive way, Bleich offers a view of language where the motivational character of language and language formation is taken seriously (Subjective 38-67).
To Bleich symbolization is the act of perceiving and identifying experiences in a literary text, what we all do when we read a poem for the first time. Resymbolization is the need or the desire to explain these experiences, often verbalized and formalized in various written discources. "Resymbolization is governed by subjective factors only" (Subjective 39). By bridging the gap between symbolization and resymbolization with theories of the motivational character of language, Bleich shows how the readers' response statements, in a concrete way, illustrate this first and crucial level of symbolization. Without the consciousness of this first stage and the inescapable subjectivity of it, readers cannot arrive at the second one, which is by nature subjective, too, but negotiable. An explanation at the level of resymbolization in the study of literature makes use of language, though of a different kind than the one used in the literary text. This is the stage where Bleich finds the merging of motives best illustrated, because literary critics and teachers often present their interpretations as the results of objective research, and conveyed in a language that conceals the subjectivity of the actual reading.
All early native language behaviour is subjectively motivated, even though some linguists and cognitive psychologists emphasise cognition as a separate mental activity (Subjective 47). Foreign language behaviour is not necessarily comparable in every respect to native language development. However, some basic properties may throw new light on the affective and thus the motivational aspect that humanistic psychology has focused on. Theoretically it is no longer possible to teach foreign languages without somehow taking into consideration the personal and emotional attitudes and conditions of the learners. Bleich uses the case of Helen Keller to illustrate the motivational character of language and symbol formation. In her case it is the stage from referential to representational thought that Bleich is concerned with, which is reflected in the dichotomy between awareness and self-awareness. Complete language mastery includes representational thought or predication and is a motivated act.5
The ability to form and use a symbol is the same as the capacity for predication. The recognition of the word water is the appearance in Helen's mind of the thought "Water is a word." The motive for the subsequent initiative is the inward sense of the pragmatic efficacy of the first predication.[...] Language is built up when previous predications are reciprocally assimilated to a present experience, rendering that experience into a new concept. The development of language may thus be conceived as motivated, from infancy into adult complexity. (Subjective 61-62)
It may seem farfetched to transfer this understanding of language to a foreign language context, where the learners have long since entered the stage of representational thought in their native language. As a matter of principle, however, there is learning to be had in the simple fact that language and personality are intimately connected, so intimately that many learners go through a frustrating experience when they have to express their mature and reflected world view through a language that very poorly matches their maturity level and personalities. In foreign language classes they become like small children again and are often judged by their teacher according to their deficient foreign language behaviour. Unless the foreign language literature classroom can be turned into an arena for individuation processes, it is unlikely that the learners will ever find the cause of, will ever feel the need for foreign language usage, and will ever experience the motivational character of the foreign language. Just as poems are not "comprehensible until we think of them as an individual's motivated act" readers cannot encounter literature unless their symbolization is accepted as a privately motivated act, and the resymbolization of it is negotiated within the context of a group of confident individuals (Subjective 62). From this position true knowledge can be developed, but absolute truth can never be found.
In my protocols the distinction between symbolization and resymbolization, or, in Fish's terminology, between primary or secondary level readings, often become blurred. The categories are still valid to find out to what extent poetry functions as an object or as a symbolic object to readers of literature. The potential for developing new language behaviour and literary competence is intertwined with the notion of literature as a symbolic object. If learners fail to see poetry as a symbolic object, language growth will be inhibited, also in a foreign language context. To turn to the crucial point of the Helen Keller story for its metaphorical force, let me compare the experience of the running water over Helen's hands with the experience of slowly running poetry through the consciousness of the readers. If this running, the line by line reading, or the temporal experience of words passing by, does not lead to enhanced language awareness and literary competence, the learning environment may not have challenged the learners into trusting their own perceptions, so crucial to make learner competence count in the classroom.
The most important question to be asked by learners is: "What do I want to know?" Not: "What is this" (Subjective 134)? In pedagogical terms the creation of new knowledge and competence is what constitutes a classroom. When knowledge is not created by the learners, but only disseminated by the teacher, the place has ceased to be a classroom. In a foreign language classroom most learners would want to know the language, usually defined instrumentally. New knowledge may be said to be created as most learners gradually develop some language proficiency no matter how brilliant or poor the teacher is. However, few young readers would willingly accept the inclusion of poetry on the school agenda as something they wanted to know. As a matter of principle, the place, where the learners have gathered, has already ceased to be a classroom. The didactic challenge is to restore the poetry and literature classroom as a place for the creation of new knowledge and learner competence, also in a foreign language context. To achieve this, the principles behind response statements as described by Bleich, my experimental line by line reading and the didactic implications of Poetry: Prima Vista may offer teachers ideas that can be converted into sensible classroom practice.
Practical Classroom Approaches
The readers of Poetry: Prima Vista tend to respond predominantly paradigmatically,6 substituting one word in the poem associatively with several others, when metaphors are used in the poems. This approach has exemplary didactic value as a simple framework to document the first reading experience. It can be seen particularly well in the protocols for "A Birthday" because it abounds in metaphors. B: TT3 can serve as a model, because she verbally combines a left column mind map and simple illustrations with reflections on these in the right hand column.
TT3: Female - Illustrations of her protcol:
"tekst"
It is the simplicity of form that makes this protocol a useful model. It shows how the meditation and concentration on metaphors can be recorded without paying attention to the formalities of a critical commentary. Spontaneity of response is given priority over accuracy and elaboration of language forms. The mind map becomes a by-product of experience, in this case with language, an experience which to Smith is the way the brain works, as "an active, experience-seeking, reality-creating organ", and not "an information-processing device" (To Think 47). The favourable condition caused by the line by line reading gives the readers a chance to experience the language of the poem instantaneously, record it effectively, remember it better, and be motivated to form their experience into a syntagmatic and communicable text themselves at a later stage (Stern, Fundamental 127).
Mind maps are communicable and a favoured method in foreign language learning, either as a class and group activity or as individual work on texts and topics generally. Within the framework of reading prima vista poetry line by line, mind maps require little in terms of structure, coherence, and cohesion and therefore contribute to lowering the anxiety level for many readers. Mind maps are suitable, particularly in order to focus on the associative and paradigmatic nature of language that the use of metaphors encourages (Stern, Fundamental 127). Associations, normally found in mind maps, are used abundantly in the responses to "A Birthday" and "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", but they are not always formed as mind maps. The readers' propensity to make use of the thinking behind this form automatically strengthens the rationale to let mind maps guide the work on poetry which relies on atmosphere rather than on narration.
The dialogic form of the protocols has self-evident methodological implications and is suitable as a primary level response. I have identified three kinds of dialogue in the protocols, where the dialogic partners take different identities; that of the poet, that of the teacher, and that of the reader herself. The intrapersonal dialogue intervenes at different places in the protocols, and even within single responses to give an untidy impression of the identity of the dialogic partner. Since the readers themselves have already demonstrated this complexity in their protocols, either as a problem of communication or as a resource for further development, the didactic potential lies in trying to refine them.
Writing without the awareness of a reader is difficult. The protocols indicate that the awareness of an external reader makes the respondents use more elaborate language, whereas the intrapersonal dialogue encourages the use of more fragments. Letting the readers, from the beginning of the reading process, choose a dialogic partner, as part of the line by line reading or any other method, will raise the consciousness of the communication situation. Prior to the reading, the learners will have to tune into the chosen dialogic partner to focus as single-mindedly as possible on the communication situation. Pretending that the reading and writing are not done to please the teacher, but to communicate an experience to a child, an immigrant from a different culture, or any other relevant addressee may increase the awareness of how language functions and what authority means in various communication situations. Trying to communicate with the poet will be an extra challenge as there are so few examples of it in my protocols. In addition to disciplining the readers to focus on author's address or audience (Wall, The Narrator's 21) by testing out various communication partners, the refinement of dialogues will implicate questions of what literature is, the poet's intention, the text, or the reader. Methods alone cannot secure the involvement of the whole personality, but they can start a consciousness raising process that, over time, can lead to less inhibition and anxiety and more self-esteem and risk-taking than what is common in the poetry classroom.
What kind of discourses do readers of poetry need to encourage self-esteem, increase motivation for reading, and expand their knowledge about literature? Some examples derived from attempts seen in the protocols have already been suggested above, such as the various kinds of dialogues and mind maps. A wider repertoire, such as role play, hot seating, reciting poetry, and genre work (Ibsen and Wiland, Encounters 137-184), means integrating creative and imaginative approaches in a systematic way, but also taking cognitive and analytical approaches more seriously, in line with the definition of intelligence offered by Gardner (Frames 3-11), and which is reflected in the general introduction to L97, also included in the new curriculum plan, L 06.
On the basis of the responses in my research, it is evident that the conceptual framework of the story or narrative is a strong guide when the students read and when they document their readings in writing. Since this framework is the readers' choice, the story's appeal secures a relaxed approach to the writing task, and the narrative can be used to cover secondary level responses, particularly as the readers are familiar with various structures of narrative and respond positively to this genre. Historical contexts and the lives of poets fascinate many respondents, as it is indicated by the suggestions they make of the possible stories behind the poem in their response to "Infant Sorrow" and "Mid-Term Break" in particular. This interest can be made use of to increase the knowledge of the poem's "setting and context, the century in which it was written, and sometimes even the kind of man who wrote it" (Constable, Practical xiii).
The genre of the biography and the conceptual framework of the narrative can be refined and developed by learners through active research on the poet's background, life, and other poems written by the same author, as an after the reading activity. Using writing as a natural tool of investigation strengthens the acquisition of language competence and makes learners more sensitive to the structures of different discourses. The teachers' informative lectures, even mini lectures about historical facts or biographical data concerning the poem may easily intervene with the primary level response and affect negatively the interest in the poem, if it comes before the first reading. My respondents tend to avoid such information, but question it when they are curious about it, suggesting that they are not initially too interested in such facts. For the poems in the research, it applies for instance to the funeral traditions in "Mid-Term Break", Heaney belonging to the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, the role of boarding schools, and the poet's loss of his brother in a car accident when the poet was fourteen years old (Corcoran, The Poetry 234-238).
The excitement of the readers to such elements in the poem would be reduced if the readers were given this information in advance. This kind of information would strengthen their efferent reading attitude at the expense of opening up to questions and ambiguities that make the reading a more personal, sincere, and confusing experience. After the first reading, the readers' curiosity for more information would be personally motivated and more exciting to make use of in research and writing tasks, if taken up after the primary response is secured. It is evident that the line by line reading of the narrative poems in particular creates suspense of a similar kind to that of literature in serial form, and therefore motivates the readers to know more. Even in "A Birthday", the question of the age, gender, and nationality of the implied "I" is asked, as a result of the slow reading process, and becomes an issue of interest.
Not only narrative is used by the respondents of my research. Poetry, translations, brief autobiographical notes, and dialogues in response to the poem are all present in their protocols to relate their reading experience. The suggestions of such discourses require structure and conceptual frameworks that can be refined and developed further in class to increase the readers' awareness of the suitability of the different genres. Some of these discourses, such as writing biographical notes and investigating the lives of poets, to a little extent require knowledge of poetic rhetoric such as the difference between metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, oxymoron and hyperbole, and the complexity of prosody. Still they require an organising structure that is a challenge to the readers' cognitive competence. Even though writing poetry does not require advanced critical vocabulary, having experienced the writing of it motivates the learners to approach this field with less anxiety than if it is presented as a condition to read and enjoy poetry. Advanced poetic rhetoric should not be a threat to the experience of poetry, and experimenting with various discourses can familiarise young readers with the terms of the trade, because they are also the "tools of the poet's trade" (Lennard, The Poetry xiv), if, as Richards maintains, it comes "after the free independent judgement" (Constable, Practical xiii).
The fact that the learner is at the centre of Norwegian curriculum plans does not imply that knowledge must be downgraded accordingly.7 It means that without proper knowledge of the learner or reader of the foreign language, the development of knowledge becomes an extremely difficult task, particularly in subjects without obvious intrinsic motivation (Brown, Principles 155-156). As opposed to Richards' research, which tends to underline that "readers of poetry frequently and repeatedly fail to understand it" (Practical 22), my research tries to make visible readers who experience and understand the poem and feel its significance, because their capacity for perception is challenged more than usual through the prima vista experience and the slow line by line process. In the privacy of reading, possibilities rather than limitations are revealed in a written discourse adapted to their real experience where also their creativity and imagination are challenged.
Concluding Remarks on the Development of Competence and Knowledge
What kind of knowledge of poetry and literature should be developed in courses of English in schools? What function should poetry and literature generally have in an educational setting? In addition to the obvious function of supplying foreign language learners with reading material in the target language, literature has other important functions in an educational setting. Van Peer suggests three characteristic functions of literature that can inform reader-oriented teaching (Literary Pragmatics 138), because the aim is to develop the reader's knowledge of literature. "What is sought and provided in the encounter with literary texts are forms of reflectivity, feelings of togetherness, and the experience of delight" (Van Peer, Literary Pragmatics 139). Forms of reflectivity imply the potential texts have to make readers think of their lives and the world, and reflect on the means through which this reflection is started, namely the language of the poem. Forms of reflectivity, though, may also cover the evaluation of ideas and themes in the text, and how the text makes readers reflect on its genesis. One reader responded like this to two lines of "Infant Sorrow".
I think I'm glad I cannot remember my birth(!!) Am I being foolished here? I do like it if I'm right. Otherwisewise just confused!!..... Yes, I was right. This is a nice poem. Very nice. Happiness baby, mother, father. Beautiful way of telling. How can anyone write a poem like this?? Do they remember what it's like to be born?? I don't think so!! I like it anyway. (IS: TT8: lines 6 and 8)
Even in primary school learners reflect on ideas that stimulate their mental framework and are willing to communicate these ideas and confidently share their thoughts with their classmates if the atmosphere is open and relaxed.
The feeling of togetherness can be strengthened through the use of poetry and the establishment of interpretive communities a natural result of this work. If an important function of literature in an educational setting is "the feeling of togetherness" (Van Peer 139), this feeling is dependent on acceptance. Regardless of prior knowledge of literary terms, a measure of togetherness is the sense of sharing something valuable and understandable in a text with someone who has experienced something similar. The need and willingness to communicate the experience of reading are natural extensions of the sense of sharing something valuable.
The interpretive community of schools has been greatly extended in the recent plan for the entire Norwegian school system by integrating information technology as a basic skill, comparable to numeracy and literacy, for all subjects (Kunnskapsløftet 65). According to the 2002 European study, Norwegian learners of English mention that part of their motivation to learn English is to be able to access the internet more effectively (Ibsen, Acta Didactica 47, 49). The fact that they also mention the learning outcome of various media as a very important source of language input motivates for a conscious use of net based teaching (51). The internet offers numerous web sites devoted to poetry and literature in English and may give valuable help for teachers who struggle with their role as poetry teachers. The web sites give access to a larger interpretive community than the classroom can offer. As a means to lower the affective filter for poetry and to develop self-esteem, the internet may contribute to improving "feelings of togetherness" (Van Peer 139).
Finally delight or pleasure in the literature classroom is the most important objective. In Poetry Prima Vista the readers reveal what kind of approaches and activities they intuitively prioritize when they are given relative freedom through the line by line reading method. More knowledge is certainly one of the aspects they search for, which is part of the pleasure. If the readers can contribute to defining some of the aspects of literary knowledge in their first encounter with a text from personal need, perhaps their willingness and ability to accept the conceptual frameworks of traditional poetic rhetoric may become greater. In my protocols, the joy of reading is documented as a reaction along with frustration, confusion, and other feelings of recognition, unease, or shock, confirming delight along with the feeling of togetherness and reflectivity as one of the functions of literature (Van Peer, Literary Pragmatics 139). It is the slow line by line method that gives the readers time and opportunity by induction to voice these issues in a personal way, which is an important step to increase knowledge about poetry cognitively. Perhaps the challenge of poetry teaching cannot be ascribed to the readers' lack of cognitive curiosity, but to the fact that they are not given time to process their reflections properly and become confident readers. If they did, knowledge, including useful conceptual frameworks, might not be a stumbling block but a natural extension of their own reflections and therefore pleasurable.
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Notes:
1 All the poems referred to in this article are printed in the article "The Classroom Reader. The Dynamic Prospecting Countersignatory". These two articles are based on the same research and the readers ought to read them together to profit the most from the reading.
2 For the entire text, see appendix to "The Classroom Reader. The Dynamic Prospecting Countersignatory".
3 I use Barbara Wall's concept about audience or addressee as a way to define children's literature.
4 Because of the length of these statements I do not include any examples here. A good example based on Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" can be found in Bleich, Readings and Feelings, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) 39-48.
5 Motivation is not defined in the usual pedagogical terms of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but is a concept necessary to understand language use in the process of shaping an identity.
6 See H. H. Stern, Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) 126-127 for the concepts of syntagmatic versus paradigmatic relations used in foreign language learning.
7 Ove Skarpenes' recent thesis, Kunnskapens legitimering: En studie av to reformer og tre fag i videregående skole, (Bergen: University of Bergen, 2004) discusses Norwegian curriculum plans with a view to the focus on the whole learner at the expense of precise knowledge in important school subjects. In my view the former does not exclude the other. Skarpenes discusses mathematics, Norwegian, and social sciences, but his view applies to the general principles in the two plans and as such affects all subjects.
8 See "The Classroom Reader" for the entire poem.