Rosenblatt Efferent And Aesthetic

Rosenblatt (1994) pointed out that most reading occur in the middle of the continuum between efferent and aesthetic stances. Aesthetic reading happens when readers are stirred by feelings and personal opinions. On the other hand, efferent reading is motivated by the purpose of retaining specific, wanted information from the text. When transacting with texts, Rosenblatt argued that readers bring their personal life experiences as well as past experiences with language in order to construct meanings. Hence, Rosenblatt suggested that after the reading event students should be encouraged to capture and reflect on the experience through drawing, dancing, miming, talking, drama, and many more. One exemplar of a study that expanded Rosenblatt’s theoretical foundation is a study conducted by Lightner and Wilkinson (2016). Building on a study by Wilkinson, Murphy, and Soter ( 2005), Lightner and Wilkinson ( 2016) added critical – analytic stance to Rosenblatt’s efferent and aesthetic (expressive) stances. In their article, Lightner and Wilkinson proposed a systematic framework for maximizing the use of talk for text-based discussion. They provided nine discussion frameworks, along with their features, for planning a good text-based classroom discussion. …show more content…
In their study, they found that drama enabled readers to experience aesthetic reading of literature in which readers brought their life and linguistic experiences while transacting with texts. They found that while reading and being involved in dramatic activity, readers who dramatized were involved in the “evocation” process, i.e., the process of interpretation “ to describe in some way the nature of the lived-through evocation of the work" (Rosenblatt, p. 70), not the signs offered by the text