Reading practices: how to favor expression of the reader-subject?

This study discusses the subjective dimension of reading within the school context, distinguishing between analytical reading (with analysis and interpretation of text, often the only modality practiced in schools) and cursive reading (denomination currently used in France to denote autonomous personal reading, exempt from coercive evaluation). This last modality of reading has been included in the official secondary school curriculum since 2001, as a new possibility for the teaching of reading. Contemporary studies in this area have shown that the cursive reading is not limited to a cognitive activity, and that the process of semantic elaboration is rooted in the subject's experience. The reader's subjective investment is a functional necessity in literary reading, since he is the one who completes the text and imprints upon it its singular form. Therefore, it is not an issue of abandoning the study of the work in its formal and objective form, but rather of accepting students' sentiments, encouraging their personal involvement with their reading.

reading; secundary education; literature; lecturers