their school texts as boring. For example, here is what a 16-year-old boy says about
Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country:
Cry the Beloved Country was boring compared with Star Wars. There were long
sections of description of people and places when nothing was happening.What boredom really means to these students is an inability or unwillingness to
participate in the creation of textual meaning, a failure to comprehend texts by filling in
their gaps. To me, comprehension really means that the text answers the questions
readers ask in their heads as they read. For many of the readers at this level boredom
arises because they don’t ask appropriate questions or generate any expectations; or
because they find the gaps between textual details and events so wide they don’t know
which questions to ask and are, therefore, confused; or because they don’t realise that
the questions they do ask are not intended to be immediately answerable, that the
information required for formulating an answer is deliberately withheld for some time
and disclosed only gradually. Here are two examples of this from 15 to 16-year-old
students:
If the starts don’t have enough action I don’t read them. It’s boring when writers go
into great details on one event. When there’s a lot of stuff about a character’s
feelings and the way he sees things it’s boring... If it’s got nothing to do with the
proper story it bores me.
In The Bridge to Terabithia there were lots of boring bits that dragged on and on,
and had nothing to do with the story, only descriptions of the house and people and
what they thought.In other words, to these young readers characters’ thoughts and feelings are seen to be
irrelevant to the action of a novel.
Level 2:
empathisingReaders at this level see characters as real people rather than as fictional constructs.
They are more deeply interested in characters and more sensitive to their feelings, and
are thus beginning to consider their motivations. Consequently, their mental images
encompass more complex feelings about characters, and their expectations include not
only what happens in action but the implications of the action for characters involved.
For example, here is a 14-year-old girl’s comment on her favourite fictional character:
In the Nancy Drew books I always feel very close to Nancy herself. In all the
adventures and troubles she got into I felt I was there with her and feeling with her.
When she was frightened I felt frightened for her.580 TEENAGERS READING: DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES OF READING LITERATURE