Pencils down: Is mimicking the behaviors of “good readers” bad for good readers?

Narter, David. (2013). Pencils down: Is mimicking the behaviors of “good readers” bad for good readers? English Journal, 102(5), 57-62.


“I like school best on Tuesdays because we don’t have our reading groups on Tuesdays, and I can think my own thoughts.” These words from a middle-school-aged gifted student, shared with me by his teacher-mother, echoed in my mind as I read Narter’s essay. Narter definitely has a bone to pick here, and I am sure the student who said the words above would agree with him. Narter begins his essay by telling us that his own son enjoyed reading until middle school, when he was forced to annotate literary texts so much that he no longer enjoyed reading them. Could it possibly be that in our zeal to help our students become more aware of their reading processes (that is, more “metacognitive”), we have gone too far and ruined the process of engaged reading for many students?

Narter suggests that some of the mania to annotate every literature text (clearly his least favorite so-called comprehension strategy) might arise from the pressure teachers feel to assess and “capture” every step of the reading process in order to have something to display and document. We’ve always had to do that with standardized testing, but with electronic grade books where every teaching action is practically public and accessible to the eyes of our peers and supervisors, we as teachers may indeed begin to get paranoid about capturing and documenting every little thing we do. If we possibly can, we want to show hard evidence that our students are thinking and learning. I must admit to feeling some of that pressure. My comments to students on papers, their grades, and every little piece of the learning process is now visible to others and no longer just between my students and me. It has made me self-conscious and perhaps even a bit anal-retentive about what I have to show from my classes.

Still, as Narter maintains, that probably isn’t all there is to this need to have students constantly interrupt their reading and constantly reflect on their reading. Narter believes that most teachers do this because they believe it will help their students comprehend better. They certainly cannot be blamed for that, with all the ink given in practitioner journals, and all the time given at conferences, to the researchers who have generated lists of comprehension strategies. For some it has been an entire career. The work of the late Michael Pressley is enshrined in the reading comprehension strategies literature and is cited repeatedly in articles on reading comprehension. Researchers like Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell have created materials that are marketed (at a high sticker price) and used widely in teacher training. They are big proponents of annotating, particularly the use of “sticky-notes” to help students record ideas during reading. The whole concept of connections—text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world—is ubiquitous in schools and even was found in state reading standards before the Common Core State Standards superseded those in almost every state. Reading strategies have been a big thing, and practices like having students annotate, predict, and reflect before, during, and after reading are widely accepted as “best practice” for helping students better comprehend all sorts of texts. Even the “before-during-after” construct I just mentioned has become enshrined in reading comprehension literature. Teachers are taught that a good reading lesson has all three parts, and that teachers need to have students doing all sorts of things and creating all sorts of accountable reflections in all three parts of that ideal reading lesson. I admit that I have myself required that of teacher education students, though less than I used to, because I have shared some of Narter’s concerns. Most of us have supported this kind of strategy instruction because we believed that was the right way to do it, even though our students (and we) did not always enjoy our reading as much when we did those kinds of lessons.

So, what is the answer? I find myself wondering if the afore-mentioned Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will only intensify teachers’ urges to have students annotate texts to death. I’m afraid they might. The standards talk a lot about “close reading” of texts, though the emphasis really seems to be more on informational texts. Will there be less literature read and more informational texts? Will there be a beneficial balance between literary and informational text, or will literature be crowded out and marginalized? Or will we employ the same close reading strategies with both kinds of literature, to the point of possible over-emphasis? Will we end up killing students’ desire to read anything they are not accountable for? Will students ever read anything for pure enjoyment in school, and will teachers be able to model the joys of engaged reading?

I’ve just flashed on Louise Rosenblatt and her descriptions of two reading “stances”: the “efferent” stance and the “aesthetic” stance. Some educators misinterpreted what Rosenblatt was saying, and have treated these two stances as separate but equally desirable. It is clear to me that Rosenblatt considered the aesthetic stance to be superior and more desirable. In aesthetic reading, the reader is highly engaged and “into” the book, and there is that almost mystical union between the text and the reader that results in the birth of a unique kind of meaning. The efferent stance entails a more “surface” level of reading, with more detachment and less involvement. I think Rosenblatt wanted all reading to be aesthetic reading, whether it was a literary text or an informational text. Any of us who have been “lost” in a book know how different that is from reading that is not so engaged. Those who misunderstood Rosenblatt’s stances have sometimes treated the efferent stance as a desirable one for reading informational texts, and the aesthetic stance as limited to literary texts. I don’t believe Rosenblatt felt that efferent reading was fully realized reading; her ideal was that everyone read every text aesthetically (idealistic as that might be).

Could emphasizing too much “close” reading and being accountable for one’s thoughts destroy readers’ ability to read aesthetically, and put too much emphasis on the shallower kind of efferent reading that learners often do in school and that are reflected in the kinds of tasks they must do for assessments? Should we be thinking more about ways to help learners like the young man I quoted at the beginning of this piece, and Narter’s young son, have more time and opportunity to read aesthetically and to “think their own thoughts” in their own ways that have worked for them as readers? Narter’s essay is, of course only one view on reading strategy instruction. It has, however, caused me to rethink what I am doing, and perhaps to give more attention to helping students think their own thoughts.