THE DISCIPLINE OF LITERARY RESPONSE - APPROACHES TO POETRY WITH L2 STUDENTS

This article focuses upon the appropriateness of reader-response appro aches to literature reaching with L2 students. It argues that response -oriented teaching is the new orthodoxy in LI literature classrooms an d that, given some necessary and overdue clarification of the concept of response, similar approaches can operate with older L2 students. Ex amples of activities with poetry with first year university students a re discussed in order to show how response-based work can develop disc iplined procedures that respect both the integrity of the texts and of the renders. The article concludes with a short list of methodologica l principles for literature teaching based on the assumption that our prime responsibility to our students is to help them become critical r eaders, not literary critics.