Thursday, September 27, 2007
Critical Encounters Ch. 3
This chapter was somewhat eye opening for me to read. I have always been taught to use reader response, with out knowing it was reader response, but at the same time not let my ideas get too far off what the teacher's ideas were. That just wasn't allowed. We were often times told we were wrong if we interpreted a story a certain way. This chapter, however was good at showing the pros and cons to the theory and the shift in the classroom environment. The examples that Appleman uses are on page 27, with the five paragraph essays turning into reading logs, the desks lined in columns switching to the desks forming a circle, etc. I also agree with Appleman when she talks about emphasizing to the students that reader response is just one technique out of many literary theories. A question that arose from this chapter was which technique is better to use in the classroom, Doing one literary theory at a time, or incorporating many theories at the same time, like the teachers did in the examples form the chapter?
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3 comments:
Let's keep that question
Let's keep that question in mind as we continue the book. I think we should discuss it.
To address the question, I think it may depend on the individual class. If something like the handout that provides an overview of theories has been introduced, then maybe you could use more than one theory on a given text. Appleman even states that she may not even directly use theory for a few weeks at a time. Introducing one theory at a time may be counterproductive because this may lead studetns to believe that more than one can't be used with a given text, but then again using various theories with one text may become confusing. This speaks to the question in chapter one of which theories are most appropriate for certain texts.
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