Page 74 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 3
The adapted model is the result of three types of changes. The first type consists of the most important contribution of the students’ voice to this study: namely, where we added part of an element or an entirely new element. For example, in the Language approach we added the element ‘Language development and variety’ (element 15), which was not part of the initial model. Furthermore, within the Language approach, we added the word ‘idiom’ to the underlying element ‘Vocabulary’. Such a change also occurred in the Reader approach, where the students mentioned personal development several times when talking about critical thinking skills, which we therefore added to element 11.
The second and third types of change were minor, and fall into two types: ambiguous distinctions and verbosity/terseness. Most minor changes made belong to the former, an ambiguous distinction between two or more elements in the initial model. The Text approach elements, ‘recognizing text types and distinguishing text types’ were merged and replaced with ‘Genre’ (element 2). Text approach element ‘Storyline’ changed into ‘Story, plot, and theme’ (element 3). And Text approach elements ‘Who/what/where’ and ‘Character development’ changed to ‘Setting’ (element 4), and ‘Characters’ (element 5). Each of the three Context approach elements underwent a refinement of this order. The three initial model Context approach elements ‘Historical aspects of a literary work’, ‘Cultural aspects of a literary work’ and ‘Social aspects of a literary work’ were merged into one element, ‘Historical, cultural, and social context’ (element 7). The students also indicated that there was an overlap between ‘Biographical aspects’ and ‘Information about the author’. We therefore changed these two elements into ‘Biographical information’ (element 6). The same was the case with Context approach elements ‘Literary history’ and ‘Literary periods, which we changed into ‘Literary history’ (element 8). The final refinement of this order was a change from two Reader approach elements, ‘Students’ personal reaction’ and ‘Critically report on reading experiences’, into one: ‘Reading experience’ (element 9).
The other minor type includes changes that were made because elements were too verbose or terse. For example, the Language approach element ‘Making reading miles to improve language skills’ was changed into ‘Language skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing)’ (element 14): this involved taking out the specifically Dutch (and possibly obscure) concept of reading miles, and spelling out the language skills. The students also indicated that the phrase ‘linguistic aspects’ confused them. We changed this into ‘Grammar and syntax’ (element 12),
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