Reading is a muscle: Go flex it!

 Alan Bennett’s The uncommon reader has the Queen of England visit a moving library, and towards the end of this short novel, Bennett writes: ‘it occurred to her that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed’. Like any other muscle, she had developed it by exercising it – by using it repeatedly.

Because we learn to read at school, and because we spend so much time reading words (on paper, on screen, on social media, on the street), this ‘exercising’ seems redundant: we’re all constantly flexing that muscle, ergo we’re all pretty good at using it (barring adverse circumstances of course: local, geo-political, educational, cognitive).

In fact, we’re so good at it, generally speaking, that we do not really think about the reading we’re doing: we’re not reading the words so much as their meaning. It’s a bit like an instrument: you’re not listening to the tuba, you’re listening to the music played by the tuba – you’re not reading the words, you’re reading the story the words make.

Yet any of us teaching literature, at any level, quickly realises that there is a world of difference between all that reading we do daily, and the reading of fiction. And we realise that saying ‘Reading is a muscle’ can only be understood when Reading is defined as ‘Fiction reading’, which itself can only translate as ‘Interpreting’, ‘Giving additional meaning’. 

Emerson is famously quoted as saying that ‘A book is a device to ignite the imagination’, but we teachers often find that not everyone’s imagination is so ignited.

What ignites it then?

First, the basics: as any player of any musical instrument will tell you, repetition of movements brings about the so-called ‘muscle-memory’ – doing it again and again is key in internalising technique. You start slowly, and focus on the mechanics of your fingers, and you steadily increase speed – which the growing internalisation of basic movements now enable you to do. By the end, you are listening to the sounds your fingers make with the instrument and you have forgotten about their movements. You are listening to the music, not the instrument.

This repetition, though, while mechanical in appearance, must yet be fully focused and self-aware: if you’re watching telly and talking to your friend while practising, the chances are you won’t be internalising much at all.  The only valuable practice is focused practice, where one consciously works on developing a muscle – while hoping it will become internalised later.

What, then, to practice – and how?

We first need to practice paying attention while reading: it’s no good reading something through at speed if all that gives you is a vague idea of ‘what’s going on’. Paying attention is the only way to see the words for what they mean, or could mean, or potentially imply, and to see beyond them: to see what is said within a context.

Let’s quickly borrow from Linguistics: a word can be said to have two types of meaning*, semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning. For example, the word ‘Stop’ means, semantically, to discontinue an activity that was on-going; and pragmatically, it can mean a command (Stop this!); or an advice (You should stop, you know); it can symbolise a hierarchy (I order you to stop), or a relationship (I’ll stop smoking if you’ll marry me) – and so much more.

So, words – in a description, a dialogue, a narrative – always have those two aspects to them. Beginning readers of fiction tend to read mostly semantically: words simply describe what is going on, they narrate a reality which is taken at face value. That’s a reading we often call ‘Reading-for-plot’, where the plot is almost a curtain between the reader and potential additional meaning.

Advanced readers always have the pragmatic mode switched on: a movement by a character, a word, an intonation given to a voice by the author, an adjective used instead of another – all those are clues for the pragmatic reader. A face turning this way of that, the eyes described in this or that way, all those details are telling, all those details carry additional meaning. The curtain is raised, and there is a world beyond the plot.

And that is what we need to practice: the pragmatic meaning, the Reading-between-the-lines meaning. Said another way: the contextualising of information collected in the text.

Simply said, famously hard to do. I won’t go here into some of the reasons why this is so hard (but you can see some of them here), and there’s not always something we can do about it, so let’s focus on how we can help.

And that is where the teacher steps in. A teacher can select texts; determine the reading tempo; the approach to the reading; can ask different types of questions of the choices made in the text, and about the text’s information; can help identify what constructs the text; and can start weaving those detailed observations into a whole.

If ‘giving meaning’ is based on contextualising what we know, then we must make sure that we do know; in other words, we need to collect information in the text, then consider bits of information in their relations to other bits. All this requires patience, attention, focus, and repetition.

And also a teacher working towards that end, and not towards an imaginary, idealised ‘meaning’.

But repetition costs time, and time is a commodity few teachers have.

And yet: practice your instrument 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, and you’ll get somewhere. Practice it one hour every two weeks, and you won’t. Repetition costs time, but practice need not be on a grand scale each time. And so ask yourself: how much of that work can you really do with a long text? How much attention can you really devote to details, when there are so many?

There are short stories out there told in 300, 400, 500 words that provide a wealth of details to pay attention to. There are short stories that focus on characterisation, others on situations, others on emotional states, and yet others on ideas and concepts. And these are stories you can read in class, with no need for the learners to prepare beforehand.

And you can always link that story’s language to any other aims you may have (grammar, vocab, culture) and even work on a skill (e.g. write up, explaining orally). The main aim, though, remains guiding learners in paying attention, picking out details they would otherwise ignore, contextualise – in the text and in life – those details. In short, holding their hand while they transition from a semantic reading to a fully pragmatic one: a social reading of fiction, a life-like one, where they can see it as the mirror Wilde says it is: to see ourselves reflected in it.

It can be a lot of work (though only once), but it will pay off. 

 

*I’m aware this is an extreme simplification, and that things are considerably more complex and not (in linguistics) reducible to such a basic either/or opposition.

 

Rupert Hart-Davis: Selected letters of Oscar Wilde, OUP, 1979
Alan Bennett: The uncommon reader, Penguin, 2008