CHAPTER 6 NEW GENRES, NEW READING MOVES: Using Think-Alouds to Teach Students About Text Types and Text Features A student reads a ballad. When students arrive in the intermediate grades, the texts we ask them to read are often new to them and require them to employ special- ized stragies that they probably do not yet know. Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies • Scholastic Professional Books 135 ecently, our family was watching the movie Chariots of Fire, which won an Oscar for Best Picture in the early ‘80s. My daughters became mightily con- R fused within the first few scenes and we had to continually pause the video- tape to explain things. I soon realized that they had two problems that were keeping them from getting the film. The first was that they did not have the background to understand the situation of the story. Readers simply cannot comprehend what they do not already know something about. If you don’t know anything at all about a topic, you have no traction—no possibil- ity of comprehending. (This is the basic insight of cognitive psychology’s schema theory.) So my wife and I explained to our girls a bit about World War I and how the Versailles Treaty led in many ways to World War II. We reminded the girls that many of their relatives had fought in both wars, and some had been stationed in England, where the movie takes place. We talked about the period between the wars as a time of a crisis of faith, the rise of nationalism, the persecution of people who were perceived as different. “This movie,” my wife told the girls, “is really about how two athletes, one Christian and one Jewish, expressed who they were and overcame the personal challenges of their era through sport.” The girls asked a few more questions and nodded that they understood. A second and equally profound challenge was that the girls had not recognized the organizational form of the movie and how the film’s structure asked them to frame their own response and interpretation. The girls did not understand who the characters were or why the film continually switched from one group of people to another. Authors of texts typically “tip-off” a reader or viewer about structure early on. An author of an argument or opinion piece, for instance, explicitly or implicity states at the outset a thesis or claim—a position that he/she will attempt to prove in the course of the piece. This claim is a tip-off of the text’s purpose, how it will be organized, and how it should be read. Readers need to learn to notice the tip-off and to mobilize the read- ing operations that such a text will require. Authors of stories tip off their readers about their structure in various ways, most simply with “Once upon a time” or a more sophis- ticated variant. For example, they might present some characters faced with a problem- atic situation. Readers are thus tipped off that the narrative will lead toward resolution. The point of view is another tip-off, letting us know whose perspectives and story we will be hearing. When points of view are alternated, the reader knows she is to compare and contrast the perspectives and stories. This is the case with Chariots of Fire, in which 136 Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies • Scholastic Professional Books the whole structure, plot, and point of the movie are driven by the viewer successfully comparing the similarities and differences in the two characters’ experiences. The “tip-off” was that we were introduced to one character, Harold Abraham, as he arrives at Cambridge University. Then we immediately switch to Eric Liddell’s arrival home in Scotland. Then we are back to Abraham’s orientation to Caius College, switch- ing immediately to Liddell’s welcome home. Then to Abraham’s first competition at Cambridge, the race against the clocktower. And back to Liddell’s first running race in Scotland. I told the girls that whenever a text switches from one thing to another and then back again, this is a tip-off that the author or producer (“the intelligence behind the text”) is inviting us to compare and contrast the two people, issues, or situations being juxtaposed. The girls understood and later in the movie were able to identify the topic and salient features of each scene, thereby understanding the implicit comparison and the point made by each comparison. This allowed them to see how different aspects of each athlete’s experience were being contrasted: their motivation, their train- ing styles, how they dealt with the women in their lives, their friends and support group, the role of faith, and much more. The girls then considered what they could learn from these contrasts. At the end, Fiona said, “I like them both. I thought they were both great runners and good people. They were just different. And so they had to deal with their problems different too.” Jasmine disagreed, “I thought Eric [Liddell] was happier and loved running more. At the end he celebrates and the other guy [Abraham] doesn’t. I think we were supposed to like them both, but admire him [Liddell] more. He ran for joy, not to win, so he was happier.” Tipping the girls off to the movie’s structure allowed them to understand how the movie was constructed, helped them to see points of comparison and contrast, and helped them to name and talk about various issues raised by the movie (like the role of faith in one’s life, or the rise of scientific sports training and professional coaching). Understanding the content, the form, and how the form invited them to respond and interpret the story helped them to talk about, consider, and deeply understand the movie’s themes. Understanding Text and Task Expectations A plethora of research indicates that student interest in reading, amount of time spent in reading activity, and reading achievement fall off after fourth or fifth grade (see, e.g., Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies • Scholastic Professional Books 137 Heathington, 1979; McKenna, Ellsworth, and Kear, 1995; Shapiro and White, 1991). My own research has convinced me that part of the reason is that we stop teaching how to read at precisely the time that students move from an almost singu- lar emphasis on reading narrative texts (both fic- tional and informational) to much more of an emphasis on reading kinds of texts with structures, conventions, and expectations with which they are unfamiliar (Wilhelm, Baker, Dube, 2001). Specifically, as students continue through school, the narratives they read become more sophisticated. Straightforward stories become less straightforward, with unreliable narrators, implied main ideas and themes, the use of sym- bolism, flashbacks, and inference gaps. Similarly, rhyming poems and lyric poems may give way to ironic monologues, free verse, ballads, sonnets, To play the reading game, you gotta villanelles, and so forth. know the rules laid down by the text Informational text in a variety of structures you are reading. also becomes more important. Students are expected to read to learn information, presented in a variety of formats, which they are expected to understand well enough that they can apply or use it, hopefully even evaluate and critique it. Just as my daughters were confused by Chariots of Fire, our students become disori- ented when they are thrown into reading a new kind of text without assistance. As teach- ers, we have to provide them with on-point instruction so that they can get their bearings. In this chapter, we will look at the specific demands of some common text types and how talk-backs or cued think-alouds can help students to recognize and meet those demands. First, what is a “text type”? I consider a “text type” to be synonymous with “genre.” I agree with literary theorists like Jonathan Culler (1975) and Peter Rabinowitz (1987) who define a genre (or text-type) as any set of texts that share the same expectations of readers. In other words, if a reader has to notice the same codes, meet the same 138 Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies • Scholastic Professional Books demands, and read two texts in the same ways using the same interpretive operations, then these two texts belong BOOKBOOK NOTESNOTES to the same genre or class of text-types. These theorists Teaching Text-Specific argue that one of the problems posed for teachers and stu- Processes dents is that we typically construe genres too broadly. For Understanding Unreliable Narrators instance, many anthologies define “poetry” as a genre. But (Smith, 1991, NCTE) offers a clear lyric poetry, for example, uses totally different codes and discussion of the specific expecta- structures than other kinds of poetry. To help readers, we tions that ironic narratives place on need to slice genres more finely, into text-types like lyric readers and a practical sequence poetry, ironic monologues, and concrete poems—groups of texts and activities that can of texts that share characteristics and expectations. teach students how to read irony and judge unreliable narrators. This text also offers an excellent exam- Planning Your Genre Instruction: Tools That Help ple of sequencing instruction so So how do you figure out what expectations particular that students learn text-by-text and kinds of text-types make on readers? One way to do it is activity-by-activity, with responsibili- to do think-alouds of your own or to study those of your ty and expertise gradually handed students so that you can see what the successful readers over to the students.