scholarly journals “I am no Othello. I am a lie”: A Consideration of Reader-Response Theory as Language Learning Pedagogy and Teacher Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Heba Elsherief
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Teaching Philosophies ◽  
The North ◽  
Educational Processes ◽  
Language Classroom

This paper seeks to articulate the understanding of transactional/reader-response as theory and its use in the language classroom as both teaching philosophy and pedagogy. First, I map the terrain of reader-response theory, its history, in general, and how it has been articulated in literary studies, in particular. Next, I briefly synthesise studies that sought to empirically study reader response in the classroom and question why these inevitably fail to engage meaningfully with it - and seem to instead only result in teacher “lesson plan” ideas. I offer a case study of a language student’s responses to the novel Season of Migration to the North (Salih, 2009) to argue that reader-response should be central to teaching philosophies that hope to centre learners in inclusive educational processes.

scholarly journals The Map of it All: Quantitative Mapping of Foreign Language in James Joyce's Ulysses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alyssa Krueger
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Genetic Data ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Quantitative Mapping ◽  
Entry Points

Readers of James Joyce's Ulysses know that it is a cosmopolitan (multilingual) novel, but most do not know just how many foreign words Joyce used, altered, and inserted throughout the writing process, nor do they know the final tally in the 1922 Shakespeare & Co. edition. This dissertation approaches Joyce's foreign language from a quantitative and genetic perspective, counting all 2,525 foreign words and attributing each to episodes and characters to visualize where and how foreign language manifests in the novel. Genetic data in turn reveals that Ulysses was not always quite so multilingual but instead became more foreign during the writing process. My study explores these foreign words as one type of the "disunities" that Andrew Gibson proposes as entry points for understanding a modernist text's unique mimesis. I explore these foreign interruptions as contributing to a consistent sense of worldliness, or multiculturalism, in the novel. Finally, I turn toward reader-response theory and neuroscientific evidence to explore the foreign words of Ulysses as units of unfamiliarity that slow readers and elicit higher levels of neurological activity, ultimately helping readers learn to read differently.

scholarly journals LITERATURE CIRCLES AS AN IMPLEMENTATION OF READER-RESPONSE THEORY WHEN TEACHING EXTENSIVE READING IN ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY

2018 ◽  
pp. 223-231
Author(s):  
I. N. Kosheleva
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Literature Circles ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Extensive Reading ◽  
Reader Response Theory

Teaching extensive reading at university has a great potential for development of students’ linguistic, thinking and creative skills. By embracing the content of a literary work, students expand their vocabulary and increase their range of grammar constructions. Moreover, literary texts comprise a variety of social, ethical, and moral problems and are characterized by diverse conflicts. They are perceived and understood as a result of literary interpretation and are determined by readers’ life experience and attitudes, cultural and moral standards. Therefore, the reader-response theory becomes relevant, since it considers reading as transaction (interaction) between the reader and the text. It means that the meaning wasn’t put by the author once and for all but will be interpreted differently by different readers. Accordingly, there is no single interpretation of the literary work. The subject of this research is the problem of teaching extensive reading in English at university through reader-response theory. The purpose of the article is to introduce the premises of this theory making a case for its application and to describe the operation of literature circles as a local example of the scientific paradigm. The methodological framework of the research was comprised of the communicative approach to teaching English, task-based language learning and the studentcentered approach in collaborative learning. The article demonstrates that literature circles function in a group where each student performs his/her role and different layers of understanding of the literary text are uncovered through peer discussion. The results of the research can be of interest to both foreign language teachers and to the researchers dealing with applied methodology of teaching literature. The author proves that literature circles favorably affect both students’ motivation for extensive reading and English teaching enhancement at university. 

scholarly journals IS ULYSSES REALLY HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
Meng Gao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Representative Work

As a representative work of modern stream consciousness novel written by James Joyce in twentieth century, Ulysses differs the traditional novel from the aspects such as the creature source of figure and plot, narration structure, a great number of metaphors and allusions usage and translation version. Therefore, its audiences are almost specialists and scholars who are dedicated to the study of Ulysses and few readers could accept it. The essay will review the novel from the stand of ordinary reader from the perspective of reader response theory to analyze the reason for which it becomes a great challenge for readers all over the world so that there could be some available ways for reader to understand the creation origin of the novel and to interpret it better. Finally, the essay hope that the value of the novel could be propagated and its novel creation could be accepted.

Chaos, Apocalypse, The Laws of Nature: Autonomy and “Unity” in Dostoevskii’s Idiot

Slavic Review ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 879-889
Author(s):  
Gary Rosenshield
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Centripetal Force ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Text Setting ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
Master Plots

Addressing what he sees as serious disjunctures in characterization and narrative technique, Joseph Frank has called Idiot “the most disorganized,” of Fedor Dostoevskii’s major works. The first part of the novel so differs from the last three parts, Frank holds, that it may “best be read as an independent novella.” Although, undoubtedly, many subtle structural, thematic, and rhetorical elements tie the novel together, Idiot does seem at times to generate as much centrifugal as centripetal force. Tackling this issue head on, Robin Feuer Miller, with judicious use of reader-response theory, succeeds in imposing some order on the narrational disjunctures of the text, setting up a hierarchy of narrators and narrative personae. More problematic, however, is the question of point of view in the larger sense. In the Bakhtinian sense, point of view manifests itself in the relation between the different narrators of the novel as the autonomous voices of the characters and the narrator enter into an unfinished dialogue. The broader use of the term concerns the novel’s worldviews, or master plots, which variously govern and structure the presentation of character, story, and metaphor.

scholarly journals Female Readers as Literary Critics: Reading Experiences of Kano Market Romance Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Haruna Alkasim Kiyawa
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Romance Novels ◽  
Romance Fiction ◽  
Romance Genre ◽  
Traditional Marriage

This paper aims to explore the female readers reading experiences, views and feelings of Hausa romance novels found in most of the northern part of Nigeria. This article also examines some criticism and accusations against the readership and content of the Hausa romance genre. The study applied the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt’s (1978) as guide by selecting 7 female readers within the age ranges between 22-26 years from 2 book clubs to participate in the study. The findings revealed that all the readers individually were able to reveal their varied responses, beliefs, and experiences on the value of the romance novels which challenged the assertion made by the literary critics and traditional society that the books have no relevance in their life activities which supported their arguments and personal interpretive reading stance towards the Hausa romance genre. The finding yielded four themes were emerging: (a) promoting literacy development; (b) resistance to the traditional marriage system in society; (d) enlightening females on social inequality. These findings provided empirical support for the application of the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt (1978) outside classroom contexts to understand the role of African romance novels towards female social transformation.  

Hermeneutics and Postmodernism: Can We Have a Radical Reader-Response Theory? Part II

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Noble
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Reader Response Theory

The flaws in Fish's hermeneutics that were diagnosed in Part I (it is now argued) are consequences of his underlying epistemology. This is a version of anti-foundationalism which claims that facts are the product of interpretation; but a careful study of how this issue is handled by N. R. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn shows that Fish's epistemology is fundamentally unsound. An alternative account of the fact-interpretation relationship is then proposed, and the outline of an objectivist, readerindependent hermeneutics are sketched. This is further developed by showing how a common argument against objectivism (based on the historical situatedness of reason and knowledge) may be refuted.

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