DEALING WITH DIALOGUE - 5TH GRADERS RESPONSES TO READING A PLAY

The present study explored the responses of 10 fifth grade children to the dialogue of Aurand Harris's (1980) play, The Arkansaw Bear. Disco urse analysis of the play revealed incidents of conversationally non-c ooperative dialogue. Six such instances, combined with six instances o f conversationally cooperative dialogue, were used to create twelve sp eech act interruption points during the groups' vend alouds of the pla y. At each interruption point, children wrote predictions for the char acter's next line of dialogue and then offered explanations for the ch aracter's line. These written explanations were examined for conversat ional cooperativity. All but five of the children's 120 written lines were determined to be conversationally cooperative, indicating strong internal models of cooperative dialogue production, but also suggestin g It lack of literary knowledge of the ways playwrights manipulate dia logue to affect readers and listeners. Children's oral explanations fo r their predictions, seen as a window on how the children interpreted and assigned meaning to dialogue, were qualitatively analyzed, reveali ng two major interpretive stances. The first, an interactive focus, co nsidered the extra-linguistic context in which characters found themse lves. The second, a focus on characters' concerns, concentrated on the thoughts and psychological state of the listening character. Given th e nature of the responses of the participating children, as well as th e unique aspects of the literary form of plays, suggestions for furthe r research and for teaching plays are offered.