I felt I could relate a lot to Deborah Coxwell-Teague’s “Making Meaning – Your Own Meaning - When You read”. I remember sitting in class in final year of high school trying to make meanings out of passages we had to read. Most of the time I knew what I wanted to say; what I thought about the piece, my feelings and emotions towards it, how I could relate it to my personal experiences, but I never knew how to explain it. My teacher would sit in front of us and say EXACTLY what it was I was trying to get out with ease. It was like she was reading my mind. I never understood how she did it! She knew everything about every passage we ever read! I can see now though that after teaching the same texts for years she had probably heard every interpretation possible.
To be completely honest, the only times (apart from the occasional book) that I read stories or write essays is for class activities. I am not a great lover of reading, however I enjoy reading autobiographies. I certainly agree that a story can have several interpretations depending on the values a reader brings to the reading. And also, people read differently. Some take a certain side, while someone else may take another view. I always used to skim read passages, especially those for school which I wasn’t necessarily all that interested in. I could often read a whole page, skipping a few lines here and there and turn straight to the next without even knowing what happened! By the end of high school I could fill margins with notes.I always used to sit back and listen to others opinions without stating my own in class discussions because I was afraid I had totally misunderstood the storyline and my feelings towards a text would be different to others. Since then I have realized that there is never only one way to read a text and as long as I had reason to back-up my interpretation I could not be that far wrong!
2 comments:
Response to Hannah:It really is hard to express your views and feelings about a book someimes. You just can't find the right words to spit it out. While you were more quite in class about your interpretation, i was speaking up. It usually made me look like the class idiot, but oh well, at least i was getting participation points. I was the same way as you about writing in the margins, i never ever did that. Now, you say you fill up the margins, and I still have never done thst. Why do you do it? Does it help you in some way? Unless I am tested on facts about the story, i would never make side notes or anything like it. But, maybe it would help me, but it seems like a lot of extra work. If it helps i guess its worth it though.
I liked what you said about it being difficult to express what you are thinking, even though you have it all in your head. That's the story of my life. I tend to take a lot more time just collecting my thoughts than other people seem to, so that is a factor as to why I don't chime in on discussions in class. But hearing other peoples' interpretations always helps me form my own; not because I'm taking their ideas or going with what other people say, but because it's frustrating to not know how to begin to say what I want to say. Some may think it's just being lazy, I've always had trouble putting what I think into words. Some people are just born with it, me not included!
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