Students responding to a short story

An explorative study of verbal and written responses

Abstract

The purpose of this small-scale explorative study is to get insight into the relationship between students' verbal and written responses to a literary text. Do adolescent students alter their response to a literary text in the course of reading, talking and writing about it? Do they develop new ideas or a different interpretation depending on the mode of response?

Participants were ten Dutch students (Grade 10, sixteen years old). They read a short story written by Jeanette Winterson, while thinking aloud. Subsequently, they responded verbally to the story as a whole, and then wrote a review in which they were asked to give their opinion of the story and to substantiate their opinion.

Differences between students' verbal and written responses were mapped out. Contrary to our expectations, students did not respond more evaluatively and interpretatively in their written reviews compared to their verbal responses. However, their judgment of the story was more differentiated in their written review, and they noticed more often literary aspects of the story than during reading and thinking aloud. The mode of response (verbal or written, online or offline) apparently may influence the way in which students respond to a story.