Meaning-making strategies in the literary reading of gifted secondary two students in Singapore

This study sets out to investigate the meaning-making strategies used in literary reading by Gifted Secondary Two Students in Singapore. It hypothesises that there is a relationship between (1) aspects of orientation to literary reading and achievement in Literature as a school subject as measured by examination performance, (2) aspects of orientation to literary reading and the use of meaningmaking strategies, and (3) the use of meaning-making strategies and achievement. The study is prompted by the need to develop a more reader-response based pedagogy in the advent of a new Literature syllabus at the secondary level. The rationale of the study is based on the assumption that by identifying patterns of effective meaningmaking strategies in Gifted readers one can achieve a better understanding of the literary reading processes of student readers and make recommendations regarding teaching approaches that can benefit students of Literature at the secondary school level. Subjects were 197 Secondary Two students in the Gifted Education Programme in Singapore. The Literary Response Questionnaire (Miall and Kuiken 1995), was administered to all subjects to obtain profiles of students' orientation to literary reading. The written responses to a poem of a sub-sample of 80 students (40 Highachievers and 40 Low-achievers) were rated on the Meaning-Making Strategies Scales (MMSS) developed by this researcher. The ratings of responses on eleven identified dimensions of meaning-making constituted a working profile of the students' use of strategies in meaning-making and their level of response in literary readingMaster of Educatio