Die leser as tipologiese kriterium by die seleksie van goeie gewilde Afrikaanse prosatekste vir nie-Afrikaanssprekendes

Abstract

The preamble to this research was of a practical nature, arising from a need in a teaching situation and leading to the questions: Do suitable prose texts exist in Afrikaans which could be read with adults learning Afrikaans who are not students of literature? Will reading these texts contribute to language learning? What is the reader's role in the realization of a prose text? These questions necessitated the identification of the role and preference of the reader as regards a prose text - from a literary theoretical and a psycholinguistic point of view. The primary aim is to investigate the reader as a typological criterion for the selection of popular prose texts of good quality for non-Afrikaans speakers. To make the study viable it needs to rest on two pillars: theory and practice. It is hoped that a contribution will be made to the development of a workable model for the description, selection and evaluation of Afrikaans prose texts to be applied in a specific teaching situation. Chapter one describes the objectives and the research plan. The theoretical component comprises the following: Chapter two, which is a discussion of the school of thought among literary theorists known as reception theory and its contribution to the reader's role. Chapter three considers the contribution which reading, and particularly the part played by the reader, makes toward language learning. Chapter four examines the reader's theoretical criteria for popular prose of good quality. Furthermore it identifies certain texts - novels and short stories - selected from a total of one hundred and twenty prose texts published after 1975 which meet these criteria. Chapter five describes the texts of the four popular works which were selected for the empirical research into reader response . This is based upon Eco's model for access to text interpretation which serves as a control for the actual reader response of the respondents. The practical component comprises the following: Chapter six describes the method for the compilation of questionnaires and the experimental procedure. Chapter seven discusses the results of the responses of respondents at an intermediate and an advanced level respectively, to the Afrikaans short story. Chapter eight describes the procedure which was followed in the reception study undertaken to determine the reader's desire to continue reading the novels on the basis of the first chapters. Chapter nine discusses these reader responses in advanced readers of Afrikaans. In Chapter ten the following central conclusions are reached: Although the implied reader remains the model, the real reader determines the reception of a text as well as its applicability in certain teaching situations. Eco's model appears to be useful for text description and for an analysis of text access. Reading prose texts for understanding meaningful contribution to language extensive language input it provides. and relaxation makes a acquisition due to the Due to certain distinguishing characteristics of popular prose of good quality, it is considered appropriate to read such prose with non-Afrikaans speakers. The empirical research provided systematic data concerning reception and evaluation of texts which give rise to teaching implications and reveal facts about reading as such, reader's preferences and aspects of text selection. On the whole, the research clearly indicates that the reader is the single most meaningful identifies the reader prose texts. element in the whole reading process and it as the determining factor in the selection of prose texts.