Influence of interpretative reading on fourth grade students' reading motivation

The present master's thesis discusses the importance and impact of interpretive reading on pupils' reading motivation. In primary school, when teaching literature, we mostly try to avoid professional reading of literary works, instead the main goal of teaching literature is to actively expose the pupil to various literary texts or the interpretation of literary works. The teacher usually reads interpretively, however, the master's thesis focuses on pupils' interpretive reading. We believe that interpretive reading should be learned by anyone, including pupils. We were interested in the extent to which we can teach pupils interpretive reading with appropriate incentives and whether it can affect their attitude towards poetry, literature in general, and above all, whether it helps to increase their reading motivation. At the same time, we were interested in whether we can influence pupils' attitudes towards reading aloud with the help of interpretational reading, as fear is also common among some pupils. The empirical part of the master's thesis consists of a questionnaire, which was used to check the pupils’ reading motivation, and guided learning hours of interpretive reading. As part of the latter, we tried to show pupils a different way of reading poetry and to excite them for it, moreover, we paid special attention to reducing their fear of reading aloud. As part of the lessons, the pupils progressed in interpretive reading of poetry and most of them took into account the elements of interpretive reading at the end of the lessons, which are also presented in the theoretical part of the master's thesis. At the end of the guided learning hours of interpretive reading, we re-examined their attitude towards poetry and literature in general, reading aloud and reading motivation with a questionnaire. Their ability of interpretative reading has improved through the lessons, while at the same time their fear of reading aloud was subsiding