Understand the Creative Reader (Exercise)

Try to remember what you read in the passage. What was it about? What were the main points?

Although the passage is not complicated, the researchers who carried out this experiment discovered that most of their study participants found the passage difficult to understand. When participants were informed that the passage was about doing the laundry, they had no trouble recalling the details. Now that you know the subject of the passage, can you remember the details?

Perhaps your reaction was similar to that of the study participants. Readers, including you, may have a hard time understanding and recalling this passage when they are not given a framework. As a result, you are left to interpret the passage without any understanding of the subject even though it is a commonly known activity. When another group of study participants was told ahead of time that the passage was about doing the laundry, comprehension and recall improved significantly.

In the absence of meaning, readers may even construct their own meaning in order to facilitate their understanding. This is known as the condition of the creative reader. Linda Flower, who coined the term, describes the creative reader this way:

What happens when readers go about decoding messages and creating meanings? The first thing to notice is that they just don't remember all the things we tell them. Instead of remembering all the details, readers do something much more creative—they draw inferences as they read and use the writer's ideas to form their own concepts. In other words, readers remember not what we tell them, but what they tell themselves.

Flower, Linda, 1993, Problem-solving strategies for writing, 4th edition (Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).