Students' Use of Languaging in Rewriting Events from The Things They Carried

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Richard Beach

Abstract

This article describes high school students’ responses to events in the novel, The Things They Carried, leading to their collaborative rewriting to create their own narrative versions of these events. It draws on “enactivist” theory of languaging, an approach to language that focuses on its use as social actions to enact and build relationships with others (Cowley, 2011; Linell, 2009). The focus is on “in-between” meanings constituted by “shared intentionality” (Di Paolo & De Jaegher, 2012) in readers’ transactions with authors’ portrayals of events in texts as well as in responding to uses of languaging in characters’ interactions. Analysis of four students’ rewriting events from the novel indicated that they drew on their responses to the novel to portray tensions in their characters’ interactions as well as their own experiences of coping with these tensions. Students also benefitted from collaboratively creating their narratives through sharing their different perspectives on events in the texts, suggesting the value of using collaborative rewriting activities to enhance students’ literary responses and awareness of how languaging functions to enact relationships.

Article Details

How to Cite
Beach, R. (2017). Students’ Use of Languaging in Rewriting Events from The Things They Carried. Dialogic Pedagogy: A Journal for Studies of Dialogic Education, 5. https://doi.org/10.5195/dpj.2017.181
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Articles
Author Biography

Richard Beach, University of Minnesota

Richard Beach is Professor Emeritus of Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on literary response, digital writing, and uses of language. He is co-author of Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference (http://climatechangeela.pbworks.com); Teaching Literature to Adolescents, 3rd ed. (http://teachingliterature.pbworks.com); Understanding and Creating Digital Texts: An Activity-Based Approach (http://digitalwriting.pbworks.com); Literacy Tools in the Classroom: Teaching Through Critical Inquiry, Grades 5-12 (http://literacytooluses.pbworks.com), and High School Students’ Competing Social Worlds: Negotiating Identities and Allegiances through Responding to Multicultural Literature. He served as organizing editor for the annual Annotated Bibliography of Research for Research in the Teaching of English from 2003 to 2012, former President of the National Conference on Research in Language, and former President of the Literacy Research Association.