A Response-Based Approach to Reading Literature

I liked Judith Langer’s article “ A Response- Based Approach to Reading Literature” because it explained that there  is more than one method of teaching reading to student; each expecting different outcomes of what we want our students to understand from the material.  As I understood the article, Langer was talking about two methods of reading: Discursive Orientation and Literary Orientation.  When we ask our students to perform Discursive Orientation Reading, we (the teacher) our asking them to find specific answers to the questions that we are asking them; in other words their answers are going to be right or they will be wrong, there is no interpretation.

Literary Orientation on the other hand is not as black and white with their answers to questions like Discursive Orientation is.  In Literary Orientation we are asking are students to interpret what they are reading and respond to the questions using their own unique understanding of the reading.  In reality we are asking our students to really dig down deep and roll around and play in their text, which is an amazing idea!  In this approach the opinion of the teacher of what he or she feels is the right answer should not be the soul decision on whether or not the student understood the text, because their opinions might differ from the teachers.  This is the great working of the human brain that not all people see things the way others do.

Unfortunately, Langer points out that, “…research indicates that literature is usually taught and tested in a nonliterary, as if there is one right answer arrived through point-of-reference reading or writing.”  She goes on to explain how the Arthur Applebee’s Literature Center conducted a study and found that most English teachers teacher literature to their students in such a way that they are guiding them from the beginning of a text to the end that there is a “predetermined interpretation” of answers that all the students need to come up with in order to be right.  I find this tactic to be almost machine like and leaves little to the imagination of what the students could really being seeing in the texts that they are reading.

In my own experiences I have noticed that they more personal a student can identify with a text or task, the better their understanding of the text they become.  Students like to share their opinions about how they feel and think, so the Literary Orientation method of reading would seem more desirable to them.  But I also see that there is a time and a place to use Discursive Orientation, because there are some questions that need to be asked of students that have right and wrong answers that can also reveal whether a student understand the text.  In other words, as teachers I think it becomes our task to figure out a way to blend these two methods together.