Olivia Fialho

Pedagogical stylistics, literary awareness and empowerment: a critical perspective:

Based on the premise that stylisticians who are involved with teaching should be aware of the pedagogical orientation and reading paradigms which inform their practice, this article questions whether critical pedagogy can dialogue with stylistics as an approach to working with literary texts in the classroom. The theoretical claims are illustrated with examples from two Literary Awareness workshops in an EFL situation. The argument leads to the conclusion that irrespective of the political orientation and a rather romantic view of education, some of the ideas proposed by critical pedagogy can still contribute to the area of pedagogical stylistics in the years to come. The article concludes with a recommendation for more empirical research in the area.

Revisiting Literary Awareness

The interest in LitAw grew from the evidence that many Humanities students go through university acquiring a rather transient knowledge about literature. They rely on a pool of dates and facts for their tests which they mostly forget after the exams. Awareness of powerful linguistic patterns, their effects on the reader, the fascination of a well-written piece, the possibility of being changed by the reading experience, these are aspects that still remain foreign to many classrooms. LitAw developed from this need to promote critical and autonomous readers who could both experience the text (Rosenblatt, 1938) and substantiate their statements from a linguistic perspective.

Foregrounding and refamiliarization: understanding readers' response to literary texts

The present study investigates the effects of foregrounding on the process of defamiliarization of students of literature and engineering, and on the way they develop refamiliarization, that is, the reconstructive process they undergo in order to return to familiar ground. It describes which refamiliarizing strategies these readers make use of and the role of feeling in this process. Data analysis is both quantitative and qualitative. The introspective method of the pause protocol is used in the qualitative part. Here, participants respond to the reading of a short story. The purpose is to investigate how they react to its content and which of its segments trigger comments. Results demonstrate that appreciating the formal elements of a text might be an effective strategy, as readers do not try to decode the text any longer and start reflecting on it, thus building an interpretation. They also develop a new perspective on the world around them and on themselves.

Interpretation and Experience: Two Pedagogical Interventions Observed1

Abstract In light of the hard times in which literary education has been finding itself, this paper evaluates the merits of two instructional interventions. It describes an experiment which contrasts interpretive and experiential approaches to reading carried out with 17 Comparative Literature Canadian university students. Two different sets of pre‐reading and reading instructions were prepared. The group working under the control condition followed a set of ‘interpretive instructions’ while the one working under the experimental condition followed ‘experiential instructions’. Participants in both conditions completed four measures: three questionnaires and a response essay. Video‐recording of small group discussions also occurred. Intervention effects were evaluated statistically. No differences were found in any of the measurements except for story‐driven reading, in which the control group scored higher than the experimental one. This means that participants preferred to focus on the plot or story‐line and showed interest for action and compelling conclusions. The video recording, however, indicated higher voluntary participation in the experimental condition. As regards class assessment, the results were rather contradictory and unexpected, leading to the conclusion that interpretation and experiencing may not present us with an either‐or situation but may most productively be regarded as complementary. Ultimately, this study advances the debate on the need to examine instructional interventions in literature classes empirically.