Active Reading: Previewing Novels (2)

Essays on the Teaching of English
Raymond Stopper
Based on His Book, Teaching English, How To….

Active Reading: Previewing Novels (2)

10-Second Review: Sampling the novel, raising questions and reading to answer them.

Here’s how I previewed novels with my students. Each student reads for ten minutes at the beginning of the novel. It is better to have students read for ten minutes rather than to have them read a certain number of pages because the students will read at different speeds and the class will have to wait for slower readers to finish the required number of pages. The teacher asks students to report on what they have read and then asks if the students have any questions about the novel so far. This sampling also gives the students a good idea about the writer’s style of writing. I record the questions on the board or overhead projector, using key words rather than full sentences.

Now the students sample from the middle of the novel, from ¾ through the novel and near the end of the novel. After each sampling, the students review what they have learned and raise questions about the meaning of the novel.

I reorganize the questions into questions of fact (will be found in the pages of the novel), questions of interpretation (usually beginning with the question “Why?”) and questions of criticism (about the writer’s methods ).

The students read in order to answer the questions that they have raised and discussion follows.

How do English teachers usually introduce novels? I was a language arts supervisor for twenty years in a primarily academic high school. Invariably I saw teachers distributing the books, listing the dates for reading and writing assignments, dates for quizzes, and dates for discussions. Then the teacher would say, “Start reading.”

In one class in which this approach to introducing the novel took place, I suggested to the teacher that she try my method of sampling. When, the next day, she tried the sampling, she stopped me in the hall and said, “They wouldn’t shut up. They were full of what they thought about the novel and they had tons of questions. They could not wait to get started reading.”

I rest my case on how to motivate students to read novels.