USING THE READER RESPONSE APPROACH IN TEACHING ENGLISH PROSE FICTION AT THE SECONDARY STAGE

Abstract

The progress of any society is measured by its ability to develop and invest man's intellectual powers. The society seeks to achieve this goal through its educational system which plays an effective role in this respect. No other goal is more important and nobler than that of training man in thinking and helping him acquire higher-order thinking skills.

Educational research and development have brought increased recognition of the fact that higher-order thinking skills can be taught and that man fundamentally prefers to learn in creative ways through creative and problem-solving activities. Teachers generally have insisted that it is more economical to learn by authority. But, now, a great deal of what is to be learnt, though not all, can be presented more effectively and economically in creative ways rather than by authority. Learning creatively takes place in the process of becoming sensitive to or aware of problems, deficiencies, gaps Ill knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on, bringing together in new relationships available existing information, defining the difficulty of identifying the missing elements, searching for solutions, making guesses or fornmlating hypotheses about the problems or deficiencies, testing and re-testing these hypotheses and modifying andre­ testing them: perfecting them, and finally, communicating the results. This is a natural healthy human process with strong human motivations involved at each stage