Journal Article

Making Interpretation Visible With an Affect-Based Strategy

Levine, Sarah

2014

Overview

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 highpoverty, 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.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subject: Adolescence / and materials / Ascription / Classrooms / Cognitive / Comparative literature / Comprehension / Constructivism / Content literacy / Depth of (higher level / Depth of (higher level, literal level, etc.) / Direct Instruction / Domain knowledge / Elementary school students / Emotions / etc. / Experts versus novices / Fiction / Harlem Renaissance poetry / Heuristic / Heuristics / High school students / Inferences / Instructional intervention / Instructional models / Instructional strategies / Instructional strategies, teaching strategies / Intervention / Language instruction / Learning strategies / literal level / Literature / Literature-based instruction / Love poetry / Low Achievement / Making inferences / Metacognition / Metacognitive strategies / methods / Multicultural literature / Novices / Poetic themes / Poetry / Poverty / Prior knowledge / Prisoners dilemma / Protocol Analysis / Quasi-experimental methods / Reading / Reading strategies / Scholarship / School based intervention / Secondary education / Secondary schools / Sociocultural / Specific subject areas (math / Specific subject areas (math, art, etc.) / Strategies / Strategies, methods, and materials / Struggling learners / Symbolism / Teachers / Teaching / teaching strategies / Thematic units / Theoretical perspectives / Transactional / Translations / Urban poverty / Urban schools / Valence / Writing exercises