Editorial

It gives me a special pleasure to address the readers of the 5th issue of Footpath and share with you some of my thoughts about the importance of this project in promoting interest in and love of reading. It gives both the students studying English and getting acquainted with its culture and their teachers an excellent opportunity to penetrate into the world of modern Britain and its people, gain a better understanding of their problems and worries and, as a result, come to a more profound view of the society with its needs and concerns. Having thought for some time about the question I would like to touch upon in this editorial, I came to the conclusion that it is worth discussing the question of the students’ motivation to read and how the Contemporary British Literature project helps to raise it and keep it at a high level.

It is known from motivation research that in order to bring the best learning outcomes our students should become what is known as “engaged” readers¹. Such readers can be described as having both the ability and motivation to read. They go beyond borders in an attempt to reach a deeper and more complex understanding of the authors, their messages, language, style and more. Regrettably though, the number of such readers is far less than desired. As В. M. Proskurnin noted in his editorial article in the second issue of Footpath, the level of students’ literary education has considerably decreased over the last 10 - 15 years ².

So, as teachers we should try our best at making the students more interested in reading, helping them to enrich themselves through it and become more engaged not only in their day to day activities but also in an attempt to become better people. I strongly believe that the project we are the participants of, together with our students and colleagues, is an excellent tool to reach these goals. The novels in the project touch upon a broad variety of issues from describing country house life to depicting representations of war to examining the nature of fiction (Ian McEwan’s Atonement); from trying to understand the essence of Englishness, to examining the connections between history, memory and fiction to analyzing class relationships and problems of gender and sexuality (Pat Barker Regeneration); from gaining a better understanding of what friendship is to dealing with relationship problems, depression and suicide to growing up (Nick Hornby About a Boy); from making an attempt to reconcile with the past to exploring the impact of science and religion, to drawing a portrait of a multicultural society, to addressing the questions of chance and character, gender and generation gap among a multitude of others (Zadie. Smith White Teeth). This is a rather brief list to give you a feel of the project’s scope and depth to show that the books in it can appeal to a broad spectrum of readers our students represent. It is aimed at showing that without doubt there is something interesting, compelling and challenging to make reading of the books included in the project a rewarding experience.

Participation in the project can help to support the students’ need for competence, autonomy and relatedness which make up a set of principles considered as the building blocks for developing and sustaining both their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for reading in the Self-Determination Theory34. To illustrate let me give you some examples from my own teaching experience which demonstrate how the students’ need for competence and autonomy are met. I start my course of home reading with a lecture aimed at getting the students familiar with the Contemporary British Literature project and introducing them to the authors and books represented in it. At the end of the lecture I ask them to read the first several pages of the book they got interested in and share their impression about the book the next time. It gives the students a chance to get their first impression about the book and decide whether they would like to read it as a whole. Even though it might seem that reading just a couple of pages from a whole book is not enough to get an insight into it, surprisingly almost without exception the students choose to read the book they selected with the help of my presentation after reading an excerpt from it. So far there has not been anybody who later discovered that their first impressions about the book were misleading.

Another example of an activity which helps to keep the students motivated to read is choosing the items for the commentaries that are written for the books by Karen Hewitt with the help of information collected from the project participants. Being involved in this work adds an extra dimension to reading, discussing and analysing the books and helps the students to become more attentive and thoughtful readers. It also makes them more responsible because they are involved in a real-life activity with the help of which the commentaries for the books are written.

Using the commentaries fills the need for the development of students’ autonomy and independence. It provides them with the information necessary to get a deeper and more complex understanding of the books’ context and specific features of the authors’ language and style. Also important is the information about the themes of the novels and the explanation of specific notions and phenomena they contain. Without doubt the availability of commentaries makes reading the books easier and more enjoyable while still leaving room for their exploration.

As for relatedness, the third principle of the model, discussions devoted to the main ideas and themes of the books provide a very good chance to involve the students in meaningful interactions. In the process of these discussions the students can help each other to understand the meaning of what they have read better and/or clarify for themselves something that they have found not so easy to comprehend. For example, Julian Barnes’ novel A History of the World in 10 У2 Chapters is quite challenging for understanding because of the various demands it makes on the readers. They range from making a distinction between a variety of narrative voices, to understanding the complexity of the language, to filling the gap in the knowledge of quite a considerable number of facts about religion, politics, popular culture and much more. However, involving the students in sharing their answers to the discussion questions or reading and providing peer-feedback on essays the students are offered to write can become a way to motivate them to read with more enthusiasm.

In addition, the students’ motivation to read can be greatly enhanced by the teachers’ involvement in the learning process [2]. On numerous occasions I had a chance to see the students’ reaction to the teachers’ commitment to helping them to get the most out of their reading experience. It should be pointed out though that this is also true the other way round, i.e. the students’ involvement contributes to that of the teacher. Together with each other, students and teachers enter an abundant world of characters populating the books; get to know closer their stories and become familiar with a broad range of issues the novels touch upon. What it gives is a better and more thorough understanding of the life and culture of modern Britain with all its diversity.

Altogether, reading, discussing and sharing opinions about the books give us and our students an invaluable opportunity to come to understand the world we live in and appreciate it in all its variety and complexity sending us on a path towards discovery.