I was hoping to evoke some subscriber discussion in an earlier post about the following paragraph, the opening paragraph of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. The issue in that post was its readability level. This passage represents a classic example of all of the problems inherent in the perspective that reading becomes more difficult and challenging as sentences increase in length and words increase in syllables. What makes this perspective self-limiting is this: In the field of reading, the default answer to the question of a passage’s readability is a “grade level.”
Hi Terry. I was not constructing meaning as I read the Faulkner excerpt. I knew every word. I can spell every word and define every word. What I was missing which prevented me from constructing meaning was the context. Also possibly related to my inability to "understand" what Faulkner wrote was perhaps my lack of background knowledge about the context; perhaps prior knowledge. As a student presented with this text I would have considered myself a failure to understand; I would have possibly concluded that I did not have "the right stuff" to be a successful student in that particular classroom or that possibly reading was not "my thing" and perhaps would never be my thing -- and if I looked around and found my classmates were constructing meaning and discussing the text with confidence I would have sunk even deeper in my seat and would have "checked out" psychologically of the educational venue I was in. This is kind of scary to me -- until I realize that all of my conclusions would have been erroneous and destructive. That discovery about what a student needs to construct meaning would excite me as a teacher because I would understand more profoundly where faux failure comes from and I would have the ability to liberate learners and keep learners on a strong and natural path to full literacy.
Where’s the beauty of reading a good narrative come in? 😄
Hi Terry. I was not constructing meaning as I read the Faulkner excerpt. I knew every word. I can spell every word and define every word. What I was missing which prevented me from constructing meaning was the context. Also possibly related to my inability to "understand" what Faulkner wrote was perhaps my lack of background knowledge about the context; perhaps prior knowledge. As a student presented with this text I would have considered myself a failure to understand; I would have possibly concluded that I did not have "the right stuff" to be a successful student in that particular classroom or that possibly reading was not "my thing" and perhaps would never be my thing -- and if I looked around and found my classmates were constructing meaning and discussing the text with confidence I would have sunk even deeper in my seat and would have "checked out" psychologically of the educational venue I was in. This is kind of scary to me -- until I realize that all of my conclusions would have been erroneous and destructive. That discovery about what a student needs to construct meaning would excite me as a teacher because I would understand more profoundly where faux failure comes from and I would have the ability to liberate learners and keep learners on a strong and natural path to full literacy.