| dc.description.abstract | In this descriptive study, involving two groups--inexperienced and experienced--of five subjects each, the author examines what happens between the time a student reads a literary text and writes about it. In the first chapter the author reviews scholarship in reader-response criticism and studies of the composing process. In the second chapter, the subjects are introduced and the various research techniques for collecting data in this study--interviews, reading protocols, writing protocols, readers' and writers' journals, and final papers written by each subject--are explained. In Chapters Three, Four, and Five, the author reports the results of the study, locates patterns, similarities and dissimilarities in the subjects' work, and comments on his own methods of research. The respective chapters titles, "Readers Reading and Readers Talking About Reading," "Writers Reading About Writing and Writers Talking About What They've Written," and "Writers Writing," reflect many of the concerns that are addressed in each chapter. In Chapter Six, the concluding chapter, the author considers what implications the subjects' processes offer to someone who wants to better understand one aspect of reading and writing--reading to write or writing to read (or re-read). The following conclusions are reached: (1) Readers and writers are often genre bound; (2) Readers rarely take time to be playful or exploratory with texts that they must write about. Writers sometimes do; (3) Readers reading and writers writing about what they've read aren't sure where they stand in relationship to either text; (4) "Inexperienced" readers/writers and "experienced" readers/writers often have different rhetorical concerns as they read and write. In addition, individualized text theories, understandable methods of the nature of research, and ways in which students develop ideas about reading and writing are three important directions that the author points to for future study. | |
