Hearing "Voices" as You Read

By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association

November 2002

Just-choked Egyptian afternoon . . . on a desperate hunt for bioterrorists . . . filth and squalor . . . relentless preying on human beings . . . biological warfare . . .”

A vivid scene, in my mind’s eye: I envision a team of resourceful experts operating in a foreign terrain with overtones of menace, an image skillfully crafted by the author.

I was drawn immediately into the story by the references to bioterrorists. But the subject of this article is the mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus. To term these minute insects bioterrorists is a clever play on words that underscores the seriousness of the mission of the investigating scientists featured in the article. But I wonder how these researchers collected their lethal samples without becoming infected themselves. Especially with the compelling data on the millions of deaths caused by communicable diseases ferried by the “mosquito taxi service.”

How do you talk to yourself when you read? As your eyes encompass lines of print, what is that “voice in your head” telling you? Perhaps it is a compelling magazine feature on the frantic race of scientists to halt the spread of the West Nile virus that has captured your interest. As you absorb the flow of information, your mind is abuzz with private chatter. You savor language, visualize scenes, ponder questions, revisit previous understandings. You talk your way through texts as you mesh your thinking with an author’s message.

The Strategy
Of course, readers engage in a variety of “inner conversations” that sometimes stray far from a written text. Minds may lapse into daydreaming or dwell on personal issues that intrude, especially if the reader finds a subject uninteresting or an author boring. Or readers may become waylaid by struggles with difficult language or challenging ideas.

To help ignite in students those inner conversations that enhance reading comprehension, Stephanie Harvey recommends the strategy of “text lifting.”

Step 1: Initially, students need opportunities to listen in as an accomplished reader shares an inner conversation while reading. Begin by selecting a short text related to your curriculum that you can display on an overhead projector. Then model for students how you talk to yourself as you read. Harvey suggests an interactive read-aloud. You read the passage out loud to students, interrupting yourself frequently to interject what you were thinking.

As you think aloud, be conscious of explicitly emphasizing strategies characteristic of proficient readers: making connections with prior knowledge and experiences, visualizing, posing questions, determining importance, making inferences, problem-solving confusions, and synthesizing meaning through summarizing, generalizing, and constructing a personal understanding of a text.

In addition, display the range of emotions that add bite and intensity to inner conversations – amazement, anger, joy, satisfaction, sadness, puzzlement all color our self-talk during reading. Include the author in your internal monologue; it is inevitable that some of your commentary will be directed toward the “hidden” partner in inner conversations, the person who is sparking your thinking through a written text. “I wonder why the author . . .” “Does this mean the author . . .” “It appears that the author . . .” are all possible avenues for a vicarious interaction with an absent voice.

A key component of the interactive read-aloud is to base your reactions on specific aspects of the text. Model how certain words or language triggered a memory, image, or question. Talk through why a particular segment impressed you as especially important. Emphasize how the author has directly stimulated your inner conversation, and how you use what an author has provided as a springboard for creating an understanding.

Step 2: Arrange for a variation of the interactive read-aloud, this time providing copies of a short text to each student in addition to modeling using the overhead. As you share your thinking, jot brief comments on sticky notes and affix them to the overhead to demonstrate tracking your thinking. In this way, ideas and thoughts that flicker into your mind as you read are “captured” so that you can return to ponder them.

Each student should also be given a pad of sticky notes for recording some of their thinking during the read-aloud. As you talk your way through sections, invite the students to join in. Harvey describes this dynamic as “text lifting,” co-constructing a meaning from a text between the teacher and students. As you jot down items from your inner conversation on sticky notes (“I wasn’t clear why the author said . . .” “This word made me think of . . .”

“Hmm. . . I wonder if the article is going to . . .” “This comment upsets me because . . .”), you are prompting students to engage in similar thinking and to begin to monitor their connections, thoughts, reactions, and confusions.

As the process unfolds, encourage more student-to-student interactions. For example, when something of high interest is encountered, pause and ask students to share their reactions with a partner. Likewise when a problematic passage appears, students can attempt to remedy their lack of understanding with a partner and then report back to the entire group what they tried so that things made sense.

Step 3: Continue with the interactive read-aloud format as students work with partners or in small groups. Instead of leading the discussion, have students participate by reading aloud to each other, and stopping after each paragraph or two to “surface” their inner conversations.

Again, have students employ sticky notes to track their thinking, or if possible, allow them to code their responses right on the copy as marginal notes. Students can also be encouraged to highlight or underline segments that surprised them, confused them, or struck them as particularly significant.

Posted October 29, 2002