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What makes a good reader?

What makes a good graded reader?

My answer to that question is very simple, in three words: a good story. Of course, there are other important elements in a good graded reader too. There is the language code, providing the lexical, structural, and syntactic grading appropriate for the target level. There is presentation: a readable typeface, an attractive cover, clear and helpful illustrations, all the things that make the book a pleasing artefact in its own right. And finally, there is the support material: introductions, glossaries, activities for before, while, and after reading.

But if we compare a graded reader to a horse and cart, we might say that the story is the horse, and all these other elements are the cart. And, as everybody knows, if you put the cart before the horse, you don't go anywhere. So the horse – the story – must come first, must have priority.

The writing aim must always be clear and single-minded. If a writer sets out, either consciously or subconsciously, to assemble appropriate linguistic data for pedagogic purposes, then almost certainly the resulting book will not be 'a good story'. However, the underlying pedagogical aim is to tell a story so fascinating, so beguiling, so unputdownable, that it draws reluctant readers into its fictional universe and holds them there, willy-nilly, until the end.

Craftsmanship

What do we mean by 'a good story'? We should identify two components here. The first is the story content, sometimes called the fabula, which is the series of events that take place in the fictional world. The second component is the story-telling, by which I mean the plot, the organization, the artifices used in shaping these events into a narrative. And what is told – the story content – can often be less important than the shape it is given in the telling. This may be even more true for graded readers.
A question often asked about the story content is whether it is better to have an original story or an adaptation. The answer is that it is completely immaterial where the story content comes from – whether it comes from the writer's imagination, or from a previous writer's imagination, and so is a retelling of an existing work of fiction. What matters is the story-telling; the key factor defining a good graded reader is the craftsmanship of the writing.

The novelist Philip Pullman, recent winner of the Whitbread Prize, is pre-eminent among story-tellers today. This is what he says about story-telling:

'It's craftsmanship. Your aim must be to tell a story as well as you can. You turn the raw materials, and all those loose bits of imagination and experience and memory, into something that stands up like a table with four legs and that doesn't fall over when you put your elbows on it.'

Good craftsmanship is even more important when one is writing in a reduced language code. In a novel, a weak plot, inadequate motivation, a shaky narrative framework can sometimes hide behind the fig leaf of elaborate and convoluted language, but not in a graded reader – where of course we cannot have elaborate and convoluted language. The language in a graded reader has to be, of necessity, clean, spare, and minimalist – and every hole in the plot will be very obvious.

Rules for writing

Are there special rules for story-telling craftsmanship in graded readers? There are many rules for good writing, but here we could mention two important ones.

The first is to avoid a simplistic approach to narrative structure. Writing in a reduced code does not mean you have to have an episodic plot which moves through each event, one by one, in real-time sequence. The language equivalent to this might be strings of simple SVO (subject / verb / object) sentences, a kind of writing which ignores all features of natural discourse, and which is, in fact, quite difficult to process. In the same way, a narrative that employs no artifices at all is unlikely to hold a reader's attention for long. On the other hand, a writer should not go to extremes. Graded readers are no place for experimental fiction. It is better to stick to a linear plot, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and to use the narrative convention of a conflict followed by a resolution.

The second rule is to remember the reader. If there is one characteristic that the community of L2 readers shares above all others, it is that they are very easily discouraged. And if they have problems in following the story, they tend to blame themselves, not the text. So if you are doing tricky things with your narrative clock, for example, make sure you build in enough time-shift signalling, so that your reader can jump from the future to the past and back to the present without thinking twice about it. If your narrative uses multiple narrator voices, make sure your language resources are sufficient to establish clearly the identity of each voice. And so on.

A good graded reader will, as the novelist John Updike put it:

'... instantly set in motion a certain forward tilt of suspense or curiosity.'

It will do this, preferably, by the end of the first page. And it will maintain this momentum throughout the narrative, keeping the pace moving, never losing the reader, setting up expectations, and satisfying them. Or, in the words of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov:

'If in the first chapter you say that a gun hung on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must without fail be

Author: Jennifer Bassett

Jennifer Bassett gained an honours degree in English and Latin from Exeter University and has worked in ELT since 1972 as a teacher, trainer, editor, and materials writer.

Jennifer is the Series Editor of the Oxford Bookworms Library , for which she has written the original stories One-Way Ticket , The President's Murderer , The Phantom of the Opera , and William Shakespeare , along with many adaptations. She is series co-adviser, with H.G Widdowson, of the Oxford Bookworms Collection . Jennifer has also written original stories for the English Today Readers and Storylines series.

Related title

Oxford Bookworms Library

Source

Oxford Teacher's Club - http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/articles/