Reading Circles, Novels and Adult Reading Development [Paperback]

Adult literacy teachers are constantly searching for effective, engaging and distinctly 'adult' ways to develop adult emergent reading and, for at least the past two hundred years, adults have formed themselves into reading circles to read and discuss novels on a weekly or monthly basis. Why then are reading circles rarely used, or studied, in formal adult literacy provision? This book explores adult reading development, novel reading and reading circles in the context of a wider examination of reading pedagogies and practices in the English-speaking world. It discusses reading as both an individual and a communal act and investigates the relationship between literature and literacy development, practice and pedagogy (including a reassessment of the controversial approaches of reading aloud and phonics for adults). Sam Duncan reviews a case study of an adult reading circle in a large London further education college and identifies the wider implications for the teaching and learning of adult emergent reading, for the use and understanding of reading circles and for how we understand the novel reading experience more broadly.

This lively and engaged bookinvites us to look at reading in a different way, moving us beyond the tiredold divisions between literacy and literature that have sobedevilled adult education. In doing so, it offers a new take on the idea ofreading for pleasure, gathering up the dimensions of reading that are anindispensable part of all acts of reading: cognitive, imaginative, affective,educational and communicative. It includes a useful overview of the wide rangeof theoretical approaches to reading and challenges the idea that some kinds ofreading are functional whereas others are frivolous and non-essential . Writtenby an adult literacy expert, it suggests that reading researchers need to talkto readers themselves about their experiences and ideas about reading. It goeson to present the many insights that resulted from asking emerginl³b