Making Interpretation Visible With an Affect‐Based Strategy

Experienced readers of literature are more likely than novices to identify aspects of text that are salient to literary interpretation and to construct figurative meanings and thematic inferences from literary texts. This quasi‐experimental study explores the hypothesis that novice readers can be supported in constructing literary interpretations by drawing on and applying everyday interpretive practices to their readings. Specifically, an everyday affect‐based practice can serve as an interpretive heuristic to support the move from a local summary to a range of figurative interpretations. The affect‐based interpretive heuristic involves identifying language in a literary text that a reader feels is particularly affect‐laden, ascribing valence to that language, and then explaining or justifying those ascriptions. In a four‐week, classroom‐based instructional intervention, a 12th‐grade class from a high‐poverty, low‐achieving, urban high school practiced this interpretive heuristic as they read literary texts. A comparative class also engaged in a unit of literary interpretation but did not use the heuristic. Analysis of a pre‐ and poststudy interpretive writing task and clinical think‐aloud protocols from both groups showed that students receiving the intervention made gains in interpretive responses, whereas the comparison group did not. The results suggest that explicit instruction in affect‐driven interpretive heuristics can support novice readers in constructing interpretive readings of literary texts.