Transaction and transition: An Asian student's encounter with American texts in an Introduction to Literature classroom

The aim of this study is to understand how one Vietnamese immigrant student responds to American texts in an introduction to literature classroom. The researcher used an ethnographic approach in order to provide a closer look at this student's literary encounter with American texts. The researcher took the role of a participant-observer in the student's learning contexts—the literature classroom where reader responses were encouraged; the writing lab where the student sought help with reading and writing; and informal gatherings with faculty and peers.;A variety of data sources were collected and analyzed to develop a highly-detailed case study. The researcher observed and audio-taped daily class discussion and writing lab sessions; interviewed the classroom teacher and talked with the writing lab teacher; collected all drafts of the student's papers with the teachers' comments as well as her American peers' papers for comparison; observed and interviewed Asian students who took other sessions of the same course; and kept observational fieldnotes and a researcher's journal of emerging hypotheses. Reader-response theory, ESL studies, and schema theory provided the theoretical framework for the detailed description of an Asian student's encounter with American texts.;The case study highlighted the personal and cultural nature of literature and the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension. The researcher found that student's interpretation was influenced by the student's personal history. She often drew upon her prior experience and knowledge to interpret what she read. She demonstrated that she could be a “meaning maker” in her own terms as a developed member of her native culture and an emerging member of American culture. Reading, as recent studies show, is a highly interactive process between the text and the reader's prior background knowledge.;In addition to the linguistic and cultural complexity of the texts, the contexts within which the student learned literature greatly affected her reading performance. A reader-oriented pedagogy encouraged making connections between the text and the reader's personal experience.