Adaptivity in reading literary texts;

Flexibility in reading literary texts -6-
response (Ericsson & Simon, 1993). Then, the participants received the following
instructions:
“You are about to read a few short stories. We would like you to think aloud as you try to make sense of
them. Try to put into words everything that is going on in your mind while you are reading. Imagine, for
instance, a radio reporter who is giving an account of a football match. A reporter can see what happens
in the field, but the listeners can’t. So, like a reporter, you have to tell us what’s going on in your mind
during reading. Don’t worry about how you say it; just share everything you are thinking the moment it
comes to your mind.”
We emphasized that it was crucial to talk as much as possible, and that there were no right or
wrong responses.
Participants read the stories fragment by fragment from a computer screen, two stories
during the first session and three stories during the next session, about one week later. The
stories were presented in the same order, beginning with the least difficult one (The birthday
calendar). For each story, we provided some contextual information, by showing the actual
published version on paper, a picture of the author, and some biographical details (year of
birth, genres, titles of previous works).
The reading of the stories on the computer was self-paced; by pressing a key the
student could advance to the next fragment, or return to a previous one. A bar indicated the
number of story fragments already processed and still to follow. When a student fell silent for
more than five seconds, we used general prompts in order to stimulate a response (‘What are
you doing?’ ‘What is going on in your mind?’). More specific directions were avoided, in
order not to cue particular responses.
Students were given as much time as they wanted. The think aloud sessions were
audio recorded on the computer, and transcripts were made of the recordings.
Protocol analysis
We collected 92 think aloud transcripts, from the 19 students, each reading four or five
stories (three recordings failed due to technical problems). The transcripts were segmented
into meaningful units or statements, most often sentences. To analyze the statements, we
developed a coding scheme of reading activities, based on the model of Andringa (1995b).
Two of the researchers tested the scheme on 30 transcripts collected in our pilot study, and
changed some of the categories to fit our material.
The process of testing and revising categories resulted in a coding scheme of eight
categories, covering most of the student statements in the pilot transcripts (see Table 1). Some
statements did not fit into any of the categories; for these, we added the category Other
activity.
To illustrate how the student responses were transcribed and coded, we present a coded
transcript fragment (see Table 2). The student in this fragment responded to the first two
fragments of The three friends. In Table 2, all comments of the transcriber are placed between
square brackets. Codings are placed between angle brackets. The abbreviations ,
and so on, refer to our processing categories.
Most students first read the story fragment through (either silently or aloud), and then started
to reread and think aloud in response to that particular fragment. Rereading and thinking
aloud often happened simultaneously. Sometimes students did not read the passage through,
but responded immediately in-between the lines.