| This dissertation examines the efficacy of using a Reader Response approach in the study of literature with Language Minority students in mainstream academic English high school classes.;The numbers of such students in the Calgary Public and Separate systems are significant: in the 1994/1995 school year, 5102 students were registered in ESL programs; by 1999/2000, the number had risen to 7827. Stats Can projections suggest this trend is likely to continue throughout the next decade.;Rosenblatt (1938, 1976, 1989), often seen as the founder of the Reader Response approach to literature, speaks of a transaction between text and reader in order to create what she termed a poem (1989: 158). This transaction is facilitated by the reader's drawing on past experiences and the language resources at his/her disposal; the more personally real the experiences, the stronger the linguistic skill, the potentially richer the poem and the richer the reader's experience of reading and personal interpretation of what is read. This implies an elaboration of the actual texts, for any text is in a sense incomplete: there are the implied antecedents, the unfilled in details, the leaps in time and place, which the good reader unconsciously fills in. Since no reader brings to the act of reading the same experiences or identical linguistic skills, responses to/interpretations of literature are going to vary. Eco (1984), Bleich (1983), Fish (1980) and others all assert the inevitability of multiple readings.;While this acceptance of multiple readings as a legitimate outcome has the capability of accommodating students whose background is different from the Canadian born student, there are potential difficulties. The Language Minority students' cultural reservoir, built up during the formative early years, is often markedly different from that shared by the English L1 speaker, they perhaps having been schooled where different educational philosophies and different protocols in such things as reading and composition prevail.;Cummins (1996) and other ESL and bilingual researchers support the importance of drawing on personal experiences and general knowledge to elucidate a text, but recognizing the potential difficulties alluded to, argue also for the imbedding of context into the pre-reading activities, an imbedding that can be progressively reduced as the students' competence in and comfort with English increases (1996: 57). Cummins' proposals are essentially complementary to the ideas of the Reader Response theorists.;A Reader Response approach, including some contextual imbedding has therefore been used in this study of nine Language Minority students. The broad goals of Reader Response have been achieved: imaginative thinking has been evidenced, the experiential reservoirs have been liberated, and through the sharing of interpretations and the discussion of same, linguistic doors have been opened. Ownership has been given to the students and the students in turn have become increasingly autonomous and discerning readers and by implication, more insightful thinkers. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
