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Seeker 2: I read theme unit, Family. The first text was about the father and son. The
father wants the son to do like him but the son didn’t believe him. The second
text was about the father and his family…. I think these two texts are
different.
Seeker 3: I read a sad story in family. The main problem was communication gap
between the father and family. I thought the story was sad because the father
always think about money.
Survivor 1: I read The Poplar Field. In my opinion, I think this poem about
transformation… If we are helpless to save environment like the poplar one
day we will feel like the man in this poem.
Survivor 2: I read the text Sons and Lovers. There is an angry father. Children fear him. I
feel pity for Paul. He don’t want to tell his father about his prize because he
is so afraid.
Survivor 3: I read about The Father and Son. Dad wants his son to grow slowly so that he
can learn a lot of things by himself… I think if dad and son listen to each
other’s problem, the problem will not happen.
(See Appendix 2 for fuller versions of these responses)
It is evident from these responses that an affective/subjective engagement with
reading literature lays the groundwork for the experience of literature as a space for
reflecting in an atmosphere free of all fear. So, it is unlikely that such an experience
of reading could either be diminished or superseded by a demand for public
interpretation. The following explanation by Nelson and Zancanella (in Hayhoe and
Parker, 1990, p. 42) not only attests to what the analysis has pointed but also
demonstrates the power of the living-through experienced by the students, which is
synonymous with response. It should be stressed here that this is the accrued benefit
of involving students with reading and personalizing it as an educational endeavour.
Such a position should be seen as a vital feature of a rewarding pedagogy of voice and
experience:
The ‘lived-through’ aesthetic experience is not short-circuited by the academic
application of a formulaic approach to the derivation of meaning and value. For
students to ‘cast their own strand of thought and text into this network’, those
strands of thought and text must be derived from an authentic encounter with the
text, not simply an encounter with the teacher’s (or some other adult’s text about
(around, upon, against, outside) the text.
The responses point to an awareness in students, which encouraged them to think
about aspects of human existence that they shared with their equals in other cultures.
It gratifies me to note that the students made a definite attempt to relate the text to
their own emotions and relationships. The element of self-referentiality evidenced in
their curiosity and concern about the ‘other’ increased their urge to communicate it in