Questioning Theological Texts: Strengthening Reader Identity
Iris Devadason, iriselina@hotmail.com
Introduction
This article is a description of my attempts to help advanced students of theology decode a difficult text independently by asking questions of it. Having taught postgraduate students for 26 years in a theological college, I now offer my tried and tested method to other teachers. Both theory and practice reinforce my conviction that this method is indispensable to those who wish to read profitably and with involvement, in private (as reading is normally done), without the English teacher's help. My argument is that reading is not just a receptive skill and should be as productive as writing is. Thus, I have used various aids to introduce the idea of reading as interaction between the reader and writer and as being a recognition of the writer's voice.
Questioning a text before and while reading is often a new idea for students as they are typically questioned after reading a text when the emphasis is on recall of content only and not of anticipation or of making intelligent guesses. "Good" reading skills and insightful questioning make it easy for the students to write a questionnaire for field education projects later in their academic career or even to subjects in pastoral counseling. Students acquire poise as individuals and gain confidence as scholars. The results are both academically and socially useful for the hesitant L2 reader.
The Situation of General Interrogation
When I began my research, I considered the following questions: What do questions imply? Why do I stress the importance of this method of reading? Where do we encounter questions in daily life? Questions are the prerogative of authority figures such as parents and teachers, the first major authority figures we encounter in life, as well as doctors, counselors/pastors, and police personnel, lawyers, and judges.
Questioning as a tool to delve deep into another's mind also finds a metaphor in the world of biotechnology. As I lay recovering from surgery to implant a pacemaker, a computer technician roused me from my sleep saying, "I want to interrogate your pacemaker!" His use of the word interrogate amused me. I wondered what he would do and how. To me this usage was new, but in fact, I now realize that all such devices (X-rays, cardiograms, MRIs, etc.) reveal what happens inside a person and are vital tools for extracting hidden meaning. If I may extend the metaphor, students' reading text may resemble a doctor examining the human body: a vast area of physical mass that may be studied at the level of the physical but that may conceal an equally vast area of complexities made up of nonphysical "meaning," including fears, attitudes, and imaginary pains that are a challenge to the physician.
In the same way, questions can be regarded as tools for extracting meaning, for tracking down hidden or latent inner knowledge. We need to ask: What is the author actually saying that is not just surface content? Asking questions goes beyond the tangible text and often amounts to a kind of eavesdropping onto the "inner monologue" of the author. Thus, questioning text opens up new areas of thoughts, facts, and interpretations. It allows the questioner/reader to assume a new role as authority, a new identity as reader. As we lead our students into the field of theology, which is such a varied field of truth and opinions and inferences, it is useful to equip them with the skills of mastering a text.
The Problem
The problem may be that nonnative English-speaking (NNES) students are often passive learners, a kind of tabula rasa, waiting for the teacher's help to fill their minds with information. Native English-speaking teachers often complain that NNES students—even NNES teacher trainees when in the United Kingdom or United States—are passive and offer no insights of their own. However, this is a cultural trait; in Eastern cultures the teacher as "guru" is a formidable figure whom one must not question. Such students have to be taught how to question a text. The idea is often new to them. I now offer my six practical solutions to this problem.
Six Solutions: My Methods in Class
In my first solution, I begin with a bit of drama! I get two students, strong in English, to read a dialogue between a Book and the Reader. This dialogue aims to get across the idea of questioning text and interacting with it, not viewing the text as a firm and final authority on a subject. This is an unusual concept for the students and gains their interest at once. I then give out copies of a simple text to read, normally taken from India Today, a newsmagazine similar to Time. I encourage them to start with basic questions of literal comprehension: what, who, which, when, where and also how and why, though these are deeper questions. I cite Kipling's poem, "Six Honest Serving Men," to substantiate the idea of questioning being an important skill: "I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I know); Their names are What and Why and When / And How and Where and Who" (Kipling, 1902, p. 60). Students wonder how they are to ask questions if they have not read the text yet, and so I help them with obvious prereading questions such as "Who wrote this article?" "When was it published?" "What does the author say of —?" which activate their latent knowledge, as in schema theory. This is followed by practice with skimming and scanning while asking all the Wh-questions. The fact that the students do not have to answer these questions but just frame them is a new idea that they have to accept and practice for their future study.
The underlying rationale behind these particular questions is that all students have knowledge simply through life experience, but they are unaware of what they do know. The teacher helps to bring out latent knowledge in them and helps them to bring this into play while decoding unfamiliar text. They are forced to be active participants and thus shed their earlier passiveness resulting from cultural inhibitions and dominating teachers.
Second, to supplement these introductory reading skills, I also use methods that are implemented outside the classroom including the "Super Reading Programme" and the SRA cards box, both from the United States. Both programs have been employed to reinforce what I have taught in the classroom and are done out of class as they contain scope for slow work such as self-evaluation which can be done without competition from peers.
Third, when the students are confident of asking well-structured questions and see the need to prepare to read by asking questions, I play a game known as the Re-Quest procedure to help them find their voice. This game is based on literal comprehension questions and group work, and the idea is from Whitaker (1983). In my 2-hour classes, I divide approximately 30 students into three groups and split one long text between them. Sections in the text are marked out for each group though all have the whole text with them. For 5 minutes only, the students are allowed to skim the reading, then they have 10 minutes to compose five or six questions in groups plus 10 minutes to write them on the board for others to see. The board becomes full of questions arranged in three columns according to group. Both teacher and students are very thrilled at this stage as the students thus far have worked entirely on their own.
After the students skim through the questions and the other sections of the reading, each group is then asked to judge whether the other groups' questions helped them to read the other parts of the text with understanding. This intensive reading brings out good responses as the students are fully involved in critiquing each others' work. Depending on the students' proficiency, I can expand the activity by proceeding to higher levels of questions.
Fourth, after my students master these introductory levels of questioning, I next introduce more sophisticated tools of questioning as compiled by Nuttal (2005) in Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. These tools include six kinds of questions that are based on Barret's Taxonomy: questions of literal comprehension, personal response, reinterpretation or reorganization, inference, style, and evaluation. Each of these types of questions parallels Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Students must understand and be able to use each type of question. I evaluate their usage of these questions by assigning them to read articles from Time or India Today and then write all of the question types. I also encourage them to develop their questioning style by telling them that the first two levels are acceptable for high school or pre-university students but that they as postgraduate students should be asking more important questions as this will help them to be good readers and critical thinkers. Because the students are not used to this type of activity, they often stop short of a good question, so I have told them to answer their own question and to then question their answer. This has worked very well many times.
Fifth, by moving from general texts (such as local and topical texts with which they were familiar) to theological ones, I am able to train students to read any text with confidence. As they begin to work with theological texts, such as "Breaking Fellowship With God," (Schofield, 1964) I do not allow them to develop questions of literal comprehension as this is very easy for them by now; instead, I push them to consider higher levels of questioning. Questions of personal response or appreciation are relevant because these require them to relate the topic to their own church backgrounds and experience. Questions of reinterpretation or reorganization involve relating the topic to outside situations, which calls not for reading that is linear and accumulative but for reading for meaning, which involves cross-referencing and reading between the lines. This challenges students as they may have never been encouraged to think for themselves in their prior learning situation for a number of reasons. Often they consider text to be like the Gospel. I have learned over the years to sympathize with students who take everything in the text as perfect and conclusive. However, with all this training, they do perform better with asking questions of evaluation as now they see their own views as being important.
Sixth, I have been able to demonstrate to my students a "real life" use for developing their ability to question by means of a research project I designed for them that required that they write and administer a questionnaire (based on Budd, 1989). As they prepared to draft their questionnaire, I asked them to consider first questions that would figure in the introduction of their essay, then questions relating to the body of the essay next, and then the concluding questions for the conclusion of the essay. This method helped to focus the topic of the questionnaire and ensured easy transference of respondents' input later. However, in addition to development of students' writing and thinking skills, the project also enabled students to meet and ask questions of people from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds: from people in authority such as church leaders to lowly workers such as railway porters, truck drivers, cobblers, blind or handicapped people, prostitutes, alcoholics, and victims of AIDS. The effect on the students from this type of questioning was emotionally powerful. Learning the skill of self-confidently asking questions has also helped them to meet those in authority without fear.
Conclusion
When I was a student of literature in the 60s we used to speak of the omniscient author who knows all and sees all. Now as teachers, we are asking readers to listen to the inner voice/monologue in the text, to do a kind of permitted eavesdropping; otherwise, their reading will be pointless. Asking questions is thus a way of instilling confidence in students who have never been permitted to think for themselves or "disturb" a class by being critical. It has great benefits all around but especially in turning diffident students into active scholars who interact with learning materials and develop into bright scholars. Asking questions in both social and academic situations is a very useful tool and I heartily recommend it to other teachers. In the gospel of Luke we read of those who have ears and don't hear and those who have eyes and don't see. Reading involves seeing and hearing at a deeper level, and asking questions is a useful tool to do so.
Iris Devadason recently retired from United Theological College in Bangalore, India. She is the author of "Doing" Reading in English (Bangalore: National Printing Press, 1997). Readers who would like further details about the activities described here are welcome to contact her for more information.
References
Budd, R. (1989). Simulating academic research: One approach to a study-skills course. ELT Journal, 43, 30-37.
Kipling, R. (1902). Just so stories. London: Macmillan.
Nuttall, C. (2005). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language (3rd ed.). Oxford, England: Macmillan.
Schofield, J.N. (1964). Introducing Old Testament Theology. London: SCM Press.
Whitaker, S. (1983). Comprehension questions: About face. ELT Journal, 37, 329-334.
