| The main objective of the present study was to examine whether or not adolescent readers make connections between their reading and their own personal experience. Two ways of making such a connection investigated in this study were experiencing emotions while reading, and recalling memories from one's own life in response to a story. The study also examined what reader characteristics are associated with making personal connections with a story. A final focus of the study was to determine whether emotions that are elicited by a story are elicited in the same way as emotions in daily life are. 59 grade 11 students participated in the study by reading short stories, and reporting on the emotions and memories they experienced while reading. They also responded to questionnaires about reading, and wrote summaries of the main point of the story. Results showed that females reported experiencing more emotions and memories while reading. The amount of reading students do outside of required school reading, and their enjoyment of reading, were not related to story response. There was however a positive relationship between story liking and story response. Students with high story-liking ratings reported experiencing more positive, negative and mixed emotions while reading, as well as more memories. Summary writing ability showed a weak negative relationship with emotion responses, and no relationship with memory responses. Academic subject preferences and expected marks were unrelated to story response, but liking English and expected marks in English were positively related to enjoying reading. An analysis of emotions elicited during reading showed that 66% of the emotions experienced while reading could be predicted based on knowledge of the category of goal-relevant eliciting events and story context. These results provide support for both reader response criticism, and the communicative theory of emotions. Implications for the English classroom are also discussed. |
