This study examined the effects of some cognitive strategies learnt by the students to foster poetic texts comprehension, and to relieve interpretation difficulties under a framework of reading as a responsive meaning construction and as a thinking activity. Since ninth grade curriculum demands elaborated poetic comprehension mastery, this approach aims to develop students’ figurative competence. In an ecological setting two regular Portuguese classes participated with a total of 25 students each, being assigned twenty lessons (forty-five minutes each) to the learning period. With the experimental group a reading program was carried out favouring self-questioning on previous knowledge recalling of concepts used metaphorically, metaphorical knowledge mapping, interpretative hypothesis and rereading. These cognitive strategies choice was based on the data of a previous qualitative study identifying strategies used by skilled ninth grade readers through the analysis of verbal protocols produced under a self-reporting verbal task.  For the control group the traditional method of teacher-student questioning and passive reading methodology were elected. The texts selected presented metaphorical content and a metaphorical structure and were written by Portuguese authors included in the national curriculum. Comprehension was assessed through the analysis of students’ reports to six open-ended comprehension questions about the texts and the analysis resulted in a classification according to a scale of cognitive response to poetry. To test the effects of the intervention plan a pre and post-test design was employed. The data showed that the experimental group achieved better results in poetic comprehension than the control group.

«While I am reading I am thinking» - a cognitive strategy for fostering literary text comprehension

Rosa Maria Amaral and Leonor Lencastre

Isabel Duarte

Faculty of Language and Literature, University of Oporto, Portugal

 Fostering reading comprehension seems to be a challenge for Portuguese language teachers since literary texts are at the core of the mother tongue curricula. In spite of the considerable level of difficulty a poetic text might eventually create leading to students’ discouragement, they are a source of unique experiences promoting knowledge building not available elsewhere (A. Eva-Wood, 2004). Under this insight ninth graders have to become «poetic» competent readers in order to succeed in the national exam. Since the curriculum includes a considerable variety of poetic production learning specific strategies to foster reading comprehension autonomy is required.

Research has so far shown that poetic reading is thinking (L. Oster, 2001) and this assumption may become a very productive cognitive strategy to be used by students.  Opposing the traditional conception, «poeticity» is not an intrinsic textual quality but derives from textual processing (P. Hoffstaedter, 1987), being the texts just inductors to the cognitive activity. These two principles together with the assumptions that ninth graders’ linguistic competence minimizes their lack of literary experience, figurative comprehension in daily discourse has already been acquired (M. C. Levoratto & C. Cacciari, 1992; 1995; 1999) and that the cognitive effort in conceptual metaphor comprehension and production is similar to the literal occurrences (Gibbs, 1994) are central in the implemented instructional intervention to promote poetic comprehension.  Also following the constructivist views, the readers should involve themselves actively in the reading process, regulate their reading activity, and become responsive meaning constructors (M. Pressley & P. Afflerbach, 1995).

In a previous exploratory study to investigate how ninth graders process information when reading poetry we used the think-aloud protocols methodology to identify cognitive strategies that skilled readers activate to build their own interpretation such as conscious and reflexive thinking about the metaphorical concepts through self-questioning on previous conceptual knowledge, metaphoric inferences through mappings between conceptual domains, interpretative hypotheses and syntheses. These strategies were included in the intervention plan.

Within this theoretical framework we wanted to examine: how much gain can be expected from a learning approach to poetic texts privileging constructively responsive reading under the conception that reading is thinking comparing to a traditional instructional model favouring teacher’s direct questions and passive reading.

Method

Participants and design

In an ecological setting of a Portuguese public school from Oporto, two regular ninth grade classes with a total of 50 students participated in the study. In the control group -16 boys and 9 girls - the mean age was 14 years, 7 months; in the group taking the intervention plan – 16 girls and 9 boys - the mean age was 14 years, 8 months.

A non-equivalent control group design with pretest and post-test measures was used.

Procedure and materials

In a total of 20 lessons (45 minutes each), including two lessons for pretesting and post-testing evaluation, four lessons were assigned to the thinking process practice after teacher’s modelling. The poem chosen for modelling has metaphorical expressions similar to the ones students use in their daily discourse facilitating the procedure internalization. A written report was made in a schematic format including:  1. the concepts used metaphorically (e.g., My love said my eyes were like sea-gulls); 2. self-questioning recalling previous knowledge on the metaphorical concepts (e.g., - What do I know about «sea-gulls»?) 3. inference-making on relevant attributes of the metaphorical concepts (e.g.,They are nice, they see well, they search for preys, they are the Portuguese symbol for freedom, because they fly they may also symbolize our dreams); 4. selection of the attributes to be mapped into the target conceptual domain (e.g., Attributes that contextually would fit into «eyes»); 5. interpretative hypotheses construction (e.g.,This metaphorical expression probably means…; it can also mean…).

In the subsequent fourteen lessons, seven Portuguese poems (2 lessons per poem), on themes within students’ universe of experience - love/friendship, youth and poetry -, were analysed following the same methodology, either individually or in peer discussion. The metaphors were recurrent in each poem and with a different level of transparency.

Group measures

Two poems with a similar metaphoric structure were selected, one for pretesting and the other for post-testing. To both groups was given a free-answer response questionnaire with 6 comprehension questions (e.g., - In the two first stanzas, the elements «snow», «tears», «jasmine» and «water» define the author’s love.  How do you interpret the verses where each of these elements occurs?).  Two independent judges scored students’ written responses based on Wallace-Jones’s Cognitive Response to Poetry scale (1991) adapted to 6- levels, being 1 for a low-level of generalization or response based on a single word and 6 for elaborated comprehension and explicative interpretation of metaphors, achieving 98% of reliability.

Data presentation and analysis

Students’ answers were transcribed and scored on the adapted version of the Wallace-Jones scale. A one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to compare the effectiveness of two different instructional approaches to literary text comprehension, controlling possible effects of previous competence (pre-test scores) (see table 1). 

Table 1

Pretest and Post test scores

The ANCOVA revealed a significant difference in the post-testing results F(1,47)=23.72, p<0.001), partial eta square=0.34.

Though the short time of experience might be a limitation because developing skilled interpreters requires longer instructional and training periods (Pressley, 2002), the results suggest that there are advantages in implemented cognitive strategies under a pedagogy favouring reading as a continuous thinking activity.