The basic aims of curricula - a positive attitude to literature and the development of literary competence - can only be achieved if they are accepted by students and if their realisation is persuasive for them. Students' own positive experiences of the pleasure and interest of reading literature, along with a responsive teacher, can contribute most to the persuasiveness of these curricular aims. To enable students to have such experiences, teachers must be aware of the dual nature of texts as both inter-subjectively accessible linguistic objects and as students' own reading actualisations, described by psychologists as the mental representation of the text and by linguists as textual worlds. Paying attention to the differences between the text and its meaning potential and the students' actualised meanings makes it possible for teachers to discuss texts and students' responses in ways that promote the upgrading of students' experiences and their trust in the importance of their own responses. Such discussion can contribute to the development of their literary competence and to their positive attitude to literature. Only after such stimulating discussion of their own responses will students be interested in how and by what means literary texts can have such an impact on the way they respond.
|