Tài liệu Reader response criticism and can tho university students’ critical thinking improvemen

Can Tho University English Department Reader- Response Criticism and Can Tho University Students’ Critical Thinking Improvement B.A THESIS Supervisors: Nguyen Thi Nguyen Tuyet, M.A Ho Phuong Thuy, M.A Researcher: Vuong Ngoc Tien Student’s code: 7032582 Class: NN0354A4 Summer, 2007 PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com CONTENTS Contents…………………………………………………………………………i Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………iii List of tables and figures………………………………………..………………iv Chapter One: Introduction 1.1 Rationale……………………………………………………………..1 1.2 Research aims…...…………………………………………………...2 1.3 Research questions…………………………………………………...2 1.4 The outline of the thesis………………………………………….......3 Chapter two: Literature Review 2.1 What is Reader- Response Criticism?.................................................4 2.2 What is critical thinking?....................................................................8 2.3 How s reader-response criticism related to critical thinking?.............10 2.4 Why should reader-response criticism be applied in literature classes?................................................................................11 2.5 Is reader-response criticism developed in Vietnamese classroom?.....13 Chapter three: Methodology 3.1 Participants……………………………………………...……………16 3.2 Research instruments…………………………………...…………….16 3.2.1 Questionnaire……………………………………………………....16 3.2.2 Observation……………………………………………………...…17 3.3 Research design………………………………………...…………….17 3.4 Procedure of data collection and interpretation……………………....17 Chapter four: Results and discussions 4.1 Questionnaires collection and discussion……………………….……18 4.2 Responses to literary works collected from observation……………..29 Chapter five: Limitations, suggestions, and conclusions 5.1 Limitations…………………………………………………...………32 5.2 Suggestions…………………………………………………..………32 5.3 Conclusions…………………………………………………………..33 Appendix 1. Questionnaires………………………………………………..……….35 2. Observation sheet………………………………………………….…38 References……………………………………………………………..……….40 PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I want to show my gratitude to the teaching staff of the English Department for their enthusiastic contribution and devotion in transferring me the knowledge during four years of study here. Secondly, I would like to say thanks indeed to Ms. Trương Thị Kim Liên, the very first teacher to bring me the love for literature and new way of criticizing literature. The next persons I am deeply indebted to are Ms. Hồ Phương Thùy and Ms. Nguyễn Thị Nguyên Tuyết, my two supervisors who enthusiastically contributed and spent time to give me their precious suggestions and advice. They spent their time from reshaping my research paper, providing me with materials transferring their experiences as well as correcting all of my drafts. Without their valuable help and support, guidance, I would not be able to finishing my research. I also wish to send me deep gratitude and sincere thanks to Mr. Trịnh Quốc Lập, who also gave me with precious ideas and supply me with valuable materials. I would nearly stop my thesis without his advice and suggestions. I also owe debt to Mr. Daniel White for his essential provision of materials and suggestions so I could complete my questionnaire. Finally, I am gratitude to my friends and the forty-nine students of English ,course 30 for their cooperation in working on my research questionnaire. PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to examine the critical thinking improvement of the third- year students of English branch, Cantho University through the Reader- Response Criticism learning method. A questionnaire was designed and developed to forty-nine students of the English department for their answers to multiple- choice questions and reflections to an openended question. The survey data was analyzed both in qualitative and quantitative methods to show the improvement in critical thinking of these students. It was full of happiness and enthusiasm to find out that the juniors’ critical thinking has been improved much in comparison with their limitation in thinking in the previous year(2006) PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURGE Table 4.1.1 The quantity of students’ understanding about critical thinking……..19 Table 4.1.2 The correlation between question one and question 10……………....22 Table 4.1.3 The importance of critical thinking in the study of literature………...24 Table 4.1.4Ways of studying literature before entering university……………….26 Table 4.1.5 Factors made students feet disgusted with literature …………..…….27 Table 4.1.6 The degree of confidence..……………………………………………29 Figure 4.1.1The frequence of using critical thinking in analyzing a literary text…25 Figure 4.1.2What students do in the phase of analysis a literary work…………....25 Figure 4.1.3Techiniques applied in studying literature…………….……………...28 PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1. 1 Rationale When we were born into this life, when we were sleeping in cradles, our mothers sang us sweet singings of the village, the bamboo trees, the flying kites, the ripe paddles in the harvest time, and so forth. As we grow up, those images become more beautiful through a poem, a story, a short literary text that we read. It is undeniable that through literature, we can know about new lands with fascinating sceneries, new people, new customs and practice, so literature indirectly supplies us with the cultural information. Furthermore, literature helps us to understand more about every aspect of the reality- the human concerns, needs; offers us valuable lessons of moral, and thus perfects ourselves. In addition, as we see that literature is one of the most important subjects in the curricula of all nations in the world. However, in the recent year, in Viet Nam, students have nearly ignored this subject. “The real situation that has to be mentioned is the serious decline in the interest of students in studying literature,” stated Dr Nguyen Thuy Hong in the magazine “The Gioi Trong Ta” (2006). A survey carried out in 2006 by her also showed that, among five thousands elementary and high school students, the number of students uninterested in literature made up to 47,6%, while 13,8% is the number of students like the subject, and the rest of the total feel very normal, do not like or love literature. In addition, in “The Gioi Trong Ta”, an article with title “An Alarm On The Uninterest Of Students In Studying Literature” by Nguyen Thi Thuan and Le Cong Minh, when these two teachers discussed the matter with some students, the students said, “Literature is unrealistic and abstract to understand”. Not only these students, but I also fell into this situation. When I was in high school, although I loved literature, I got bored with this subject because of the way my teachers transferred me PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com the lessons. Every time in class, teachers just introduced a literary text and then read aloud the analyzed patterns for us to write down. Therefore, to us, to understand and perceive as well as interpret a literary work is hard. That was why I gradually did not like the subject anymore. Luckily, when I became a student of Can Tho University, I had chance to expose to a new learning method in British Literature course. This theory once evoked my ideas and feelings towards literary works and helped me understand their values more deeply. Moreover, Mr. Pham Van Dong(1973) voiced his opinion “Teaching literature is mainly to teach students how to express what they think honestly, clearly, exactly, and to set off what they want to say”. Therefore, is there any “Yeast” to stimulate students get more involved in this subject? I have read a research (2006) about this problem of a student of English Department, Can Tho University. In his research, he studied the theory Reader- Response Criticism and observed the reaction of students towards this theory. Therefore, in my research, I am very enthusiastic to check the critical thinking improvement after more than one year implicating this literary theory in studying literature of students who participated in Long’s study in 2006. 1.2. Research aim This study is carried out to examine the improvement in critical thinking of Can Tho University students, English Department, after more than one year applying the theory Reader- Response Criticism in their study of Literature. 1.3 Research questions As I have just mentioned, literature fosters human’s emotional growth and takes the humanity values itself, so it is very necessary to make students interested in subject. “Whether the critical thinking of students becomes more profound in compared with their reaction of the previous year” is always one of my concern. Basing on this aim, I form my research question: “To what extent is English students’ critical thinking improved in their study of literature through the theory Reader-Response Criticism after more than one year?” PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com 1.4 The outline of the thesis The order of the thesis covers in five chapters. Chapter One includes the rationale, and the research questions. Chapter Two focuses on the literature review consisting of the theory Reader- Response Criticism, its relation to critical thinking, and its application. Chapter Three describes the methodology. The fourth chapter is about the results got from my methodology, and discussions. My limitation, suggestions, and the conclusion will be in Chapter Five. The references, questionnaire are also displayed on the last pages. PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, I would like introduce the theory “Reader-response criticism”, the relation between Reader-response criticism and critical thinking, the significant of applying the theory in classes and its application in Vietnamese classrooms. 2.1. What is Reader- Response Criticism? Reader-Response Criticism is one of inspiration that readers should send in comments on articles and review, readers asking for information or just wanting to share their own stories, views (wikipedia.org). In literature, Reader- Response Criticism, as its name implies, focuses on readers’ responses to literary texts. This theory is against one called “New Criticism”, which was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the mid twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. New Criticism adheres emphatically in the advocacy of close reading and attention to texts themselves, and their rejection of criticism bases on extra-textual sources, especially biography. At their best, new critical readings were brilliant, accurately argued, and broad in scope, but sometimes they were idiosyncratic and moralistic (wikipedia.org). The notion of “ambiguity” is an important concept within New Criticism, several prominent new critics have been enamored above all else with a way that a text can display multiple simultaneous meanings. In 1930s, I.A. Richard borrowed Sigmund Fereud’s term “over-determination” to refer to multiple meanings which he believed were always simultaneously present in language. To Richards, claiming that a work has one and only one “True Meaning” is an act of superstition (The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1930). PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com In 1954, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published an essay entitled “The International Fallacy”, in which they were strongly against any discussion of an author’s intention, or “intended meaning”. For them, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside the text was quite irrelevant and potentially distracting. Before 1960s, much more of literary criticism and theory had had a reader-response element than people had ever admitted. However, in 1960s, Reader-Response Criticism officially appeared and seemed to be approved of by most of literary critics at that time. Reader-Response Criticism is a group of approaches to understanding literature that explicitly emphasizes the reader’s role in creating the meaning and experiences of a literary work. More specially, Reader-Response Criticism refers to a group of critics who study, not a literary work, but readers or audiences responding to a literary work. This school emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly, in America and Germany. In 1973, Holland had conducted case studies of particular readers reading and free associating to particular poems and stories when he published Poems in Persons (1973) and 5 Readers Reading (1975). He concluded from the evidence that it is readers and audiences who shape literary experiences. Reader-Response Criticism is a literary critical theory, promoted by Stanley Fish in 1980s, which suggests that a text gains meanings by the purposeful act of a reader reading and interpreting it. The relationship between reader and text are highly valued in such a way that text does not exist without a reader. Fish laid out his theory regarding interpretive strategies. In Reader-Response Criticism, the reader and the interpretive community to which the reader belongs judge the work. Reader- Response Criticism might look at the way in which different interpretive communities value a text, for historical purposes or such critics may examine the way in which some interpretive communities pose the best method for reading a text. Traditionally, Reader-Response Criticism often adhered to formalist or new critical PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com approaches in reading texts. However, in 1980, Fish suggested that the reader be taken into account. . New critics evaluated text without prejudices, but Fish argued that such a thing was not possible. The “I” of the reader will always color the text. The reader’s preferences in interpretation will always make certain aspect of a work more important than others. According to Hans Robert Jauss(1980), Reader-Response Criticism’s emphasis on the construction of a text originated in the branch of Philosophy called phenomenology. The phenomenology deals with the “understanding” of how things appear.” The phenomenological idea of knowledge is that reality is to- be found not in the external world itself, but rather in the mental perception of externals. That is, all that we human beings can know - actual knowledge- is our collective and personal understanding of the world and our conclusions about it. As a consequence of this concept, Reader-Response theory holds that the reader is a necessary third party in the author-text-reader relationship that constitutes the literary work. The work, in other words, is not fully created until reader makes a transaction with it by assimilating and actualizing it in the light of his or her own knowledge and experience. Dewey (1960), a pragmatist, and a philosopher claimed that practically constructive thinking usually occurs when there is conflict or discomfort or when habitual behavior and new behavior be made. As a consequence, such thinking grows out of tension bringing up the stimulus to seek a solution Moreover, the validity of thought will usually depend on whether emotion has been controlled and has not darkened the actual situation.” Impulse is needed to arouse thought, incite reflections and enliven belief. But only thought notes obstruction, invents tools, conceives aims, directs technique, and thus converts impulses into an art which lives in objects” (Dewey, 1930). Since Louis Rosenblatt first published Literature as Exploration in 1938, critical theories have been risen and crashed, but the preeminence of her theories, particularly since the mid 1960s, underscored most of the innovations in critical theory associated with the PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com dominant teaching approach since then; that is reader-response to literature. This work was primarily interested in describing readers’ processes of engagement and involvement, for composing their own “poem” (1964), focuses on responding as an “event”. Rosenblatt (1938) wrote “The special meaning, and more particularly, the submerged associations that these words and images have for the individual reader will largely determine what the work communicates to him. The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past event, present needs and a particular physical condition. These and other elements in a never-to-beduplicated combination determine his response to a peculiar contribution of the text”. Rosenblatt(1960) proposed that the meaning of a text derives from a transaction between the text and reader within a specific context, thus emphasized the essentiality of reader and text. Transaction permits emphasis the to-and-fro, spiraling, nonlinear, continuously reciprocal influence or reader and text in the making of meaning. The meaning happens during the transaction between the reader and the signs on the page (Transactional Theory, 1960). Rosenblatt also reacted critically to the narrow focus of much literature instruction on literal recall or recitation of teacher- made meaning prompted her to provide a useful distinction between the two opposing modes of experiencing a text, the efferent and the aesthetic. When responding from the efferent stance, we are motivated by specific needs to acquire information contained in the text; we basically just want to understand what the text is saying. In contrast, when we read the aesthetic mode, we experience personal relationship to the text that we focus on our attention on the emotional subtleties of its language and encourage us to make judgments (Rosenblatt, The Reader, The Text, The Poem, 1978) In brief, Reader-Response Criticism has a peculiar role because it offers chances for readers to interpret literature by their own ways. PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com 2.2 What is Critical Thinking? “Critical thinking( appeared in the Socrates time) is that mode of thinking about any subject, content, or problem in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them” (Michael Screven and Richard Paul, 1985). Therefore, to these two authors, critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to believe and action. In addition, in its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter division: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reason, depth, breath, and fairness. In addition, according to Michael Screven and Richard Paul (1992), a well-cultivated critical thinker has these following characteristics: raising vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely, gathering and assessing relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively coming to well- reasoned conclusions and solutions. Then, he or she, the critical thinker, would test them against relevant criteria and standards, think open-mindedly within alternative system of thoughts, recognize and assess, as need be; their assumptions, implications and practical consequences, and communicate effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems. Another famous definition critical thinking is from Ennis (1991). He defined critical thinking “as reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do”. To Ennis, critical thinking includes such acts as formulating hypotheses, alternative way of viewing a problem, questions, possible solution and plans for investigating something. In his definition, Ennis distinguishes between skills (analyzing argument, judging credibility of PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com sources, identifying the focus of issue, asking, answering, and asking clarifying and/or challenging question), and attitudes, the so-called dispositions (be prepared to determine and maintain focus on the conclusions or question, calling to take the whole situation into account, prepare to seek and offer reasons, amendable to being well informed, willing to look for alternatives and withholding judgment when evident and reason are significant) (Ennis 1987,1991;Kenedy, Fisher, Ennis 1991). Although most authors agreed that critical thinking involves both skills and dispositions in empirical, often psychological, research attention is primarily paid to the thinking skills. Pascarella and Terenzini (1991, p.118) noted that critical thinking has been defined and measured in a number of ways, but typically involves the individual’s ability to do some or all of the following: identify central issues and assumptions in an argument, recognize important relationships, make correct inferences from data , deduce conclusions from information or data provided, interpret whether conclusions are warranted on the basic of their data given, and evaluate evident or authority (Furedy & Furedy,1985). Several authors also emphasized the reflective, self-evaluative nature of critical thinking, and point out that the meta-cognitive skills needed for this should be addressed in instruction (e.g.Halpern, 1998). Paul (1992) even calls critical thinking spurious when students are not being taught standards and criteria for assessing their own thinking. For Kuhn (1999), meta-cognitive skills, meta-cognitive knowledge and epistemological beliefs are crucial for critical thinking. In general, critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies toward self-delusion (Michael Screven and Richard Paul, 1985). For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a lifelong endeavor. 2.3 How is Reader-Response Criticism related to critical thinking? As I have just mentioned in the previous section, we can infer that readers are critical thinkers because they themselves give personal reflections, comments, critical thinking to what they read. Fish (1972) claimed that a work of literature becomes reality for the “critic” through the act of reading, a process he termed “reception”. As reading occurs through time, the experience of literature involves a continuous readjustment of perceptions ideas, and evaluation with the meaning of the work encountered in the experience of it. Literature becomes a process in which criticism involved the processing of phrases and sentences in a slow sequence of discussion, revisions, anticipations, reversals, and recoveries. Also, reader’s response is to the texts, it is the continuous shaping of the events of reader’s mental process that slowly adjusts the thought to finally gain an understanding of the actual meaning of the text. Whereas to critical thinking, the critical person is someone like a critical consumer of information, he or she is driven to seek reason and evidence. Enrich (1987) suggested that critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or to do. Mathew Lipman (1988) wrote “the improvement of student’s thinking depends heavily upon student’s ability to identify and cite good reason for their opinions”. As students, readers can freely give their opinions, expressions ,i.e., they can use all their personal knowledge about individuals, and bring all available literary, educational, sociological and PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com communicative knowledge to bear in studying the meaning- making situation, meanwhile critical thinking is independent thinking, free from external pressure because the readerscritical thinkers must be autonomous, that is, free to act and judge independently of external constraint on the basic of his or her own appraisal of the matter at hand (Siegel, 1988 ). 2.4 Why should Reader- Response Criticism be applied in literature classes? The phase of giving responses by readers can be considered of post- phase. The prephase is the process of meaning- making. During this process, readers play the role of the intermediate to keep the literary texts being discussed and make certain time for reflection to share their opinions and to listen to other’s as well as to give and to get comments. The entire procedure there is one of meta-cognition in which readers are assisted in gaining an awareness of their own thought processes as meanings grow and are shaped personally and socially. This proves that during the process, readers give their responses after reading any literary text. They gather their knowledge in many fields of study to analyze, to perceive and then to give reflections to the problems. They use cognition- the process by which knowledge and understanding are developed in the mind- to do this task. As I mentioned above, not only do readers use cognition but after the procedure of sharing opinions they gain meta-cognition. Mial and Kuken(1998), mentioned that readers’ responses to literature are the reflections of their own concepts, perceive to what they sensed. Additionally, this mode in which readers are self-required greater efforts to absorb literary texts causes the impact on the readers’ understanding and feeling. Reader- Response Criticism is the mode that reflects expression of inner truths of each of us, of individuals because our individual, our “selves” is something unique to each of us, something essential to our inner core; therefore, readers perceive means they criticize. By this way, readers will develop their critical thinking as they PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com can move beyond the passive learning of evaluative standards to the creation of their own standards of criticism. David Bleich applied Reader- Response Criticism in the 1960’s by collecting statements of students about their feelings and associations towards stories and poems. He used these both to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He also claimed that his classes “generated” knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts. During the 1970’s, Holland and his co- writer at the state of New York at Buffalo, Murray Schwartz, developed a style of reader- response teaching which they call the “Delphi seminar”. In the seminar, for the first part of the semester, students were introduced poems and stories by their instructors. After reading, they together with instructors had to write whatever came to mind those to poems and stories. In the second part, the students and instructors took one another’s free associations as the text to which they responded. The seminars provided those who participated in a sense of their own style of responding to literary texts and to other people, in short, a sense of their own identities. One peculiarly important figure is the literary theorist and English educator, Louis Rosenblatt, the first person to apply Reader-Response Criticism in her literature classes. By stressing primarily experiences in literature classes she hoped to restore the aesthetic value of literature as well as to enhance its instrumental value in achieving broad educational aims. She encouraged students to take an active role in constructing meaning, her Reader-Response theory suggested that each experience with a text and other readers brought a host of new potential of responses and new meanings as well( Literary Theory, 1965) To sum up, we see that readers’ response criticism is really beneficial in term of improving readers’ critical thinking, Therefore its application in classrooms is very necessary. PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com 2.5 Is Reader- Response Criticism developed in Vietnamese classrooms? The previous section proves that Reader-Response Criticism has been applied so widely in literature classes in America and Europe; and has contributed a significant role in helping readers to perceive literature in their own ways. In other words, Reader-response criticism is the newest approach of literary criticism approved by literature critics and readers, so has it been applied and developed in Vietnam? A study named “The students’ reactions toward literature through Reader-Response Criticism” carried out by Tran Ngoc Phi Long at Can Tho University in 2006, showed that when being asked about the awareness of reader-response theory, 52, 63% knew very little about Reader-Response Criticism while the others knew the theory. However, when reading, the students’ responses toward the story “The Lady or The Tiger?”, he realized that students’ critical thinking was not profound because their answers were merely on the surface. What students interpreted was just the “determinate meaning” referring to what might be called the facts of the text, certain events in the plot or physical description provided by the words on the page. Therefore; Reader-response criticism is not so popular in Vietnamese classrooms. Due to the fact that studying literature in Vietnam has been going into “paths” in the recent years, educators have looked into this problem and trying to solve it. Particularly, Vietnamese literature testers have gradually changed into giving open exam questions on exams on literature. In the magazine “The Gioi Trong Ta” (2006) of the Mouthpiece of PsychologyEducation Science Association of Vietnam, Dr. Nguyen Thuy Hong shows that there has been a change in testing literature in lower and upper high school examinations. To lower school graduation examinations, testers pay attention to give questions in terms of exploring the perception ability of students. In addition, the tests require students to analyze and criticize a PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com literary work that they have learned before, and write an essay about some certain aspects like lifestyle or morality, and so on. In higher school competitive examinations, testers ask students to apply their knowledge about literature history, reasoning, criticizing and authors’ lives into their tasks. In addition, such questions aim to test not a certain literary work, but in a higher sphere, through intertextual reader- response questions, testers require students synthesize knowledge of some of the contemporary literary works so that testers not only can examine what students have learned but also their own ideas about the matters involved in those works. These ways of giving questions on particular exams are to give chances to students to evoke their free associations, feelings, encourage their creativity, and show their critical thinking. As we see that Reader- Response Criticism approach has been put into practice in English literature classes at Can Tho University. However, it is just applied through giving tests in some certain examinations in elemantary, lower and higher schools in Viet Nam, but the popular implication of this theory in classrooms in these schools is still minor. PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY This chapter describes how the research was designed. It includes the groups of participants, the instruments used to do the research, research design, and the way to collect and analyze the data. 3.1 Participants There were 60 third-year-letter students of English, belonging to English Department, Can Tho University, taking American literature course in the second semester, school year 20062007, and two literature teachers got involved in the research. These participants have spent totally three semesters accustoming to and getting familiar with the theory Reader- Response Criticism from the previous courses “Introduction To Literature” and “British Literature”. However, only 49 students took part in the study at last because when the researcher came to their classes to observe and deliver questionnaires, 11 students were absent. 3.2. Research instruments Two kinds of instruments were used in this study; they were the questionnaire and class observation. The statistical program Excel was used to analyze the data. 3.2.1. Questionnaire The questionnaire consists of totally three main parts. The first part is the statement of the researcher’s purpose of designing the questionnaire. In the second part, the researcher provided students with a general definition of the theory Reader-Response Criticism by Hans Robert Jauss (1980) so as to remind them clearly and scientifically the method that they are applying in their study of literature. PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.fineprint.com