“The utter nightmare of us students” Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts Rachel Pole I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? - Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” Reading challenging literary texts often results in feelings of confusion, frustration, and alienation in students. The dynamics between students, instructors, and difficult literary texts are both challenging to understand and of great importance because of how such engagements can enhance cognitive and emotional growth. By analyzing a student-created podcast which aims to demystify complex works such as those by Shakespeare, this paper examines the strategies employed by the students-creators to overcome challenges presented by text. It uses a combination of video recordings, transcripts, and interviews to investigate what the students found meaningful as they reinterpreted their reading experiences for the creation of the podcast episode. By focusing on not just the product of the student podcast, but also the process in the form of the experiences, strategies, and appeals they relied on and deployed, this paper attempts to contribute to an understanding of these complex dynamics. 1. Introduction In the study of language, engaging with literary texts is one of the most challenging tasks a student might confront. A text can be challenging on many different levels, sometimes simultaneously. The language of the literature might be archaic, abstract, or full of jargon. The plot might be nonlinear or slow. Characters might take actions that are seemingly inexplicable or distasteful. This small sampling of readerly troubles is only the beginning. The instructor’s role in this engagement is likewise difficult to AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0008 Rachel Pole 148 navigate; too much guidance can become dictatorial or coddling, while too little is an act of instructional abandonment. The opportunities for alienation, student from text, teacher from student, are many. If we take these recognitions as a starting point, two questions quickly arise. The first is why bother with challenging literary texts in the first place, when other, more accessible options may present many of the same possibilities for enrichment. Multiple answers are possible; the response most pertinent to this paper addresses the nature of difficulty and confusion and the emotional responses they produce. Instructors have long seen that engaging with a difficult concept, be it expressed in words, mathematical symbols, or sounds, can lead to better student outcomes long after the initial encounter. Research has supported these impressions, with multiple studies finding that students who persist in the face of difficulty perform better overall in academic settings (Meyer & Turner 2006: 381). In terms of literacy, engagement with a text’s difficulties can enhance reading skills at large, leading to a more profound understanding of not just the text itself but also the skills and strategies used to understand the text (Salvatori & Donahue 2005: 3). Further, the emotional impact of successfully confronting difficulty can be a profoundly positive experience for the learner. All reading, to some extent, can be seen as “a mode of negotiating uncertainty; ” when the text is particularly challenging, the uncertainty is increased (Allen 2012: 108). Engaging with that uncertainty leads to a “flexibility of mind” that not only benefits the student’s performance, but also positively affects their selfconception (Salvatori & Donahue 2005: 3; Allen 2012: 108). Another way of thinking about the broader benefits of reading challenging texts is implicit in Poletti et al’s concepts of readerly hospitality and reader resilience. Building on Attridge’s definition of the former, Poletti et al. argue that successfully reading a challenging text requires a student to not just tolerate the text’s otherness, but to welcome it. Doing so requires courage and openness to experience; not being able to understand during an initial reading and persisting nonetheless requires resilience (Poletti et al. 2016: 241- 242). These qualities of courage, openness, and resilience are clearly desirable inside and outside of the classroom. Thus, we can see that engagement with difficult texts has the potential to positively influence a learner’s performance, skill level, self-image, and habit of mind. The second question arises from the first. If we recognize that including difficult texts in a curriculum presents both significant benefits and challenges, then instructors must consider how best to support students in their reading. Done poorly, the experience can leave a student feeling alienated not only from the assigned text, but from all literature and resistant to future reading. In order to avoid this outcome, the instructor must consider not only their own lesson plans, but also the student’s experience, both emotional and cognitive, of engaging with a text. The student who is negotiating uncertainty has been and should continue to be studied, not only Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 149 in terms of performance or outcomes, but in terms of experience. The problem here is, of course, that this is difficult to do. The instructor can mediate the text in the classroom, can facilitate discussion, can assess and guide and course-correct but none of these can be successful without understanding what it is students feel and think in those moments when they must rely on their own resources to confront the challenge. As Poletti et al. observe, the role of affect in the encounter between student and literature receives less attention than cognitive processes (2016: 239). This understanding of affect is naturally difficult to universalize, but research points to several factors that play an outsized role in many students’ experiences of reading difficult texts. One is the notion of control. Pekrun et al. found that the perception of control, or lack thereof, in learning is profoundly activating for student emotions (2010: 38). The other factor, according to Pekrun et al, that occupies a place of great importance for student response is subjective importance, or value (2006: 586). The student’s perception of positive value for both the learning activities and outcomes is essential in the production of positive achievement emotions like hope and pride; a perceived lack of value can lead to hopelessness, shame, or boredom. In other words, students must have a sense of both agency and importance in their learning in order to produce positive emotions about learning. How to create an environment in which students are not only given control and valuable work, but also are able to perceive them as such, is essential in creating a positive learning environment. Making control and value visible to the learner is, naturally, the task of the instructor. It is important to note that none of the frameworks mentioned above advocate for avoiding negative emotions while reading; in many cases, it is recognized as inevitable (Poletti et al. 2016: 234). Identifying which negative emotions arise, what causes them, and which tools can be used by both the instructor and the learner is rather the project at hand. This article is based on the following observations: engaging with challenging texts is immensely valuable for students but difficult for the instructor to execute well. An important starting point for the instructor seeking to do this is to understand the student’s emotional, as well as cognitive, experience of navigating the challenging text. Students themselves are the source of potential answers, particularly advanced students who already have many of the resources necessary for reflectively and analytically engaging with texts. As Chick et al. found in their study of teaching students to understand and appreciate complexity in literary texts, many students are “poised to move their readings to a more advanced level with…guidance and support” (2009: 407). Turning to students for answers as to where to begin with this project, as the following article does, centers their experience in order to learn how the instructor can address issues related to control, value, and emotional response to help students successfully engage with difficult texts. Rachel Pole 150 2. Context Course description This study focuses on student output created during an advanced listening and speaking course (Listening and Speaking 3, referred to as LS3 going forward) at the English Department (Institut für Anglistik) of the Universität Innsbruck in the winter semester of 2022-2023. Most participants in LS3 are enrolled in either the teacher training program or the English studies program and are in their fourth or fifth semester of study. In order to take the course, they must have successfully completed two previous listening and speaking courses and several other language proficiency courses. By the end of LS3, successful students must be able to perform at a C1/ C2 level in both listening and speaking, according to the Common European Framework (Council of Europe 2020: 48, 62). I designed and taught the continuous assessment assignment described below, which, along with both a listening and speaking exam, must be completed to pass the course. The four students whose work is examined below were informed, after they decided on a topic, that I was interested in studying their process and results and were asked to video-record their meetings. I collected their notes and performed interviews after their semester grades were released, in order to keep my research as separate as possible from the course-bound assessment. The student group Students in LS3 self-selected their groups of approximately three to four students. The group whose work is studied below was comprised of four undergraduate students, all of whom were native German speakers. Three members of the group were teacher trainees, and one member was studying English language, literature, and culture. All four students were taking LS3 for the first time and passed the course at the end of the semester. One student was male and the other three female, which roughly corresponds to the demographics of most courses at the English department. The assignment As part of the continuous assessment of LS3, students were required to create an approximately 20-minute-long podcast episode, the first of an imagined series. Students spent the first few weeks of the semester listening to professionally produced podcasts across a range of genres and topics to familiarize themselves with both existing concepts and the language used within. Students self-sorted into groups, which were then tasked with pitching potential topics, writing a script, and finally producing a sound file at the end of the semester. The purpose of the project was to expose Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 151 students to a range of styles, registers, accents, and genres through listening to podcasts and then have them demonstrate C1/ C2 level competence in speaking by creating their own. The project also fostered the development of skills related to use of technology, group work, and research. The episode Within the first few weeks of the semester, the group developed a series concept wherein the hosts would examine difficult literary texts and their authors as a means of increasing motivation, decreasing anxiety, and facilitating understanding in their target audience, students less advanced than themselves. The podcast series was named My Dear, We Don’t Give a Damn, in reference to the final line of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936), and was intended to convey both the hosts’ irreverent tone and the imagined lack of interest on the part of the audience. As designed, each episode would convince the listener to “give a damn” about a chosen author’s body of work through providing context, drawing connections to the present, and acknowledging, in a playful manner, the indifference and/ or anxiety that the reader might face when assigned a daunting literary text. The group quickly decided to treat the work of Shakespeare in their pilot episode, which they entitled “Hamlet.” All four students had read one or more plays by Shakespeare and had vivid memories of their experiences which informed what they included in the episode. The podcast episode, at 20-minutes-long, was divided into a brief introduction, historical and biographical information, and a summary of Hamlet. Modernday connections, “fun facts,” and humorous comments dotted the transitions between each section. Each student took on a different role throughout the episode, leading to a recording with a moderator, “literature guru,” historian, and “fun fact guy” (“Hamlet,” 2023). In creating an entertaining guide to be listened to before reading, the student-creators’ goal was not only to remove anxiety and boredom from the reading process, but also to open the door for the opposite. In creating moments of humor, identification, and connection, the student-creators, as we shall see, plumbed their own reading experiences. By examining both their product and their process, I hope to shed some light onto a relatively dim, difficult-to-observe corner of the reading experience. When these student-creators reflect on their own challenging reading experiences to guide less experienced students, we can observe not just cognitive strategies for solving a practical problem, but also affective responses and imaginative positions from which to take up a difficult literary text. Rachel Pole 152 3. Methodology In order to examine how the student-creators used their own experience to develop the podcast episode, materials from the student project were gathered and analyzed. These included the episode transcript, the video recording of four online meetings held by the student-creators throughout the semester, written reflections completed by each group-member at the end of the semester, and the sound file. Additionally, I conducted interviews with each of the group members individually after their grades were given. The diversity of materials required several different analytical approaches, which will be detailed below. Transcription and audio file classification The episode transcript and the audio file were rather naturally paired together. Seven types of appeals to the audience were identified through a close reading of the transcript, namely contemporary connections (1), use of slang (2), comparisons/ connections to the present (3), humanizing Shakespeare (4), use of the second person (5), sarcasm and/ or irony (6), and reference to students’ imagined feelings about this topic (7). Instances of each were identified and tallied, in hopes of understanding which methods the student-creators relied on to achieve their purpose. Naturally, there is some overlap between several of the above categories. For example, use of the second person may occur in the same utterance as reference to students’ imagined feelings. In that case, the utterance was classified with both 5 and 7. The video recording of the meetings and written reflections were used to both clarify the research questions of this article and to draft interview questions. A close reading of the meetings and the reflections helped me to understand just how much the student-creators were relying on their own experience of reading Shakespeare to inform their creative decisions. Conducting the interview In writing and conducting the interviews, I employed hierarchical focusing, a technique in which the interview begins with more general questions in an attempt to elicit relevant information with minimal direction. Should this fail to produce sufficient information, the interviewer asks another, more targeted question. This focusing can be repeated until the scope of the question asked is quite narrow (Tomlinson 1989: 165). The interviewer attempts to use the language of the interviewee, and avoid using new terms, to allow the interviewee to lead the introduction of new concepts to the conversation (Tomlinson 1989: 169). This technique was ideal for several reasons, including the relatively narrow scope of the research and the familiarity of the participants with the interviewer. The most significant Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 153 reason for the suitability of hierarchical focusing is that it allows the student-creators space to explore experiences and factors that I could not have anticipated in my questions. Because I was primarily interested in identifying which experiences they deemed useful and how they translated those into a guide for future readers, rather than in specific strategies, emotions, and skills, this technique lent an openness to our discussion that would have otherwise been difficult to achieve while maintaining topic coverage. Definition of terms I relied on several definitions and one taxonomy in my discussion of both the episode and the interviews below. The understanding of confusion used in this paper is derived from Lodge et al’s work on difficulty and confusion in learning. They use the term “cognitive disequilibrium,” drawing on Piaget’s concept of cognitive development, which arises from an imbalance caused by new information conflicting with the learner’s previously held mental schema (Lodge et al. 2018: 6). However, Lodge et al. acknowledge that confusion is not merely a result of cognitive processes, but also emotional ones, as well. Using Pekrun and Stephen’s categorization of confusion as an “epistemic emotion,” Lodge et al. conclude that “confusion can be defined as an affective response that occurs in relation to how people come to know or understand something” (2018: 4). This dual nature of confusion is reflected in how the student-creators discussed both their memories and the podcast episodes, slipping back and forth between describing emotions and cognition, which I will discuss in the findings section. Further, Lodge et al. point out that this disequilibrium can be difficult to identify; it is even more difficult to prevent disequilibrium from turning into boredom or frustration, which are emotions that impede learning (2018: 2). The student-creators, in the interviews, were able to reflect on their own moments of disequilibrium, and, in creating their episode, were attempting to prevent boredom or frustration in their audience. It is significant to note that neither Lodge et al. nor the student-creators discuss preventing confusion itself, which is seen as an inevitable and even productive emotion (Graesser & D’Mello 2012: 241). As also conceived by Pekrun et al, confusion in learning is profoundly activating, alerting the student not only that new information is present, but also that any number of processes may soon be underway (2010: 46). Confusion is the starting point for reexamining previously held schemata, challenging student self-definition, and prompting a search for new learning strategies. The term “activating” is taken from Pekrun’s taxonomy of the so-called achievement emotions. In devising a questionnaire (the Achievement Emotion Questionnaire, or AEQ) to detect student’s emotions while learning, Pekrun et al. created four categories, each containing one to three feelings. They are “positive activating (enjoyment, hope, pride); positive deactivating (relief); negative activating Rachel Pole 154 (anger, anxiety, shame); and negative deactivating (hopelessness, boredom)” (2010: 38, italics in original). These categories, designed along the axes of activation and valence, are useful for examining the way the student-creators talked about their purpose, audiences, and effects the episode elements were meant to inspire. Further, this taxonomy provides a useful rubric through which to understand the student- creators’ comments on their own experiences reading Shakespeare. Limitations The most obvious limitations to the observations contained below is the sample size of four students and the specificity of one project. This paper is designed to look deeply at a small sample size’s work in order to draw conclusions about what students themselves do to find support in encountering challenging texts and what and what they then recommend to other, less advanced students. The small and specific dataset is therefore not a significant hinderance to the larger goal of this article which is to observe and, if possible, take away a deeper understanding of affective response to difficult texts in students. Their purpose in creating the episode is discussed extensively; I determined what that was through the close analysis of the episode and the interviews. Whether or not the podcast was successful in achieving this purpose for the prospective listener is outside of the scope of the research. Another issue is that the student-creators were largely working in their second, and in some cases, third, language. While all were advanced students of English, it was perhaps a constraint at times to the ease and precision of expression in both the podcast episode and the interviews. In the interviews, the fact that I was communicating in my native language and that they were answering in their second or third contributed to the power imbalance already present between an instructor and student. As discussed above, I attempted to address that by using hierarchical focusing and by conducting the interviews after the grade for both the project and the class had been given. I emphasized to the student-creators that their participation in this project was distinct from their performance in the course. 4. Findings Topic, audience, purpose All four student-creators reported quickly arriving on both the broader topic of introducing difficult literature to their fellow students and the first episode’s focus on Shakespeare. In terms of the former decision, this seems to have been inspired by Student 4’s viewing of a YouTube video explaining the Nibelungen Saga in what she described as a “studentor teenagefriendly way” (interview with Student 4, 2023). Shakespeare was chosen Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 155 as the focus for Episode 1 due to a range of reasons. Students 1, 2, and 3 alluded to Shakespeare’s centrality to the English literary canon in that his work “comes to mind when you think about literature” (interview with Student 1, 2023) and that there is “no way in literature to not talk about Shakespeare at least once” (interview with Student 2, 2023). Student 3 discussed this centrality in practical terms, referring to the number of Shakespeare’s works on the English Department’s Reading List exam, wherein all students are tasked with reading a large number of literary works across era, genre, and location in preparation for an oral exam (interview with Student 3, 2023). Here we can see external factors, like Shakespeare’s centrality to the curriculum, contributing value to the project of reading his plays. In Pekrun et al’s conception, this establishes conditions in which hope (“I will be able to read this.”) and pride (“I was able to read this.”) can flourish (2006: 586). In addition to importance, Student 1 also raised the other governing factor in the student-creators’ decision-making, that of difficulty. He identified Shakespeare as one of the “hardest to understand” writers and further imagined that difficulty as an impediment to learning. He imagined a teacher simply assigning Hamlet to be read at home, with the result that “…nobody will understand…and if they do, they won’t remember anything. So yeah, I think trying to find an interesting way of instructing or just getting the idea across [was our goal]” (interview with Student 1, 2023). In his conception, exposing the students to Shakespeare’s work without adequate support will negatively affect both motivation and information-retention. This observation is supported by research that providing timely feedback or support before, during and after a challenging task is essential (Lodge et al. 2018: 4). The student-creators wanted to produce some of that extra-classroom support, one whose relevance and utility would be bolstered by their decision to deal with what they perceived as one of the most challenging and important writers in English literature. The imagined audience for the episode was very close to the student- creators’ own identities, namely high school or university students in the English classroom. Interestingly, when the student-creators discussed this broader audience, they almost completely ignored issues specific to fellow EFL learners. In fact, in development meetings and in the realization of the podcast, the student-creators elided many issues that one would imagine relevant to EFL learners. It is my opinion that they did so because they imagined the instructor in the classroom helping students with the language while reading the plays; in contrast, their podcast episode was to be consumed as a kind of pre-reading exercise that focuses more on general information. Student 1 described the imagined identification between the hosts and the listeners, and the general nature of the information as “really relatable… it’s just probably easier to hear from other peers that struggled with the exact same problems other than adults that are kind of, you know, Rachel Pole 156 probably historians or people that studied Shakespeare in depth” (interview, 2023). As seen here, the student-creators imagined their audience was composed of only students. While three of the four were teacher-trainees, they did not conceptualize their episode as material to be used by the instructor in the classroom, but rather as a resource for the motivated but intimidated student looking online for support from their fellow students. In the interviews, Students 2, 3, and 4 focused on the compulsory nature of their listeners’ reading, the emotions the assignment inspired in them, and how the tone and content of the podcast episode could address the more negative aspects of those feelings. This is, in some ways, the other side of Shakespeare’s importance, or value, in the study of English literature. His work is inevitable, leaving the student with little control, which could lead to anxiety, hopelessness or shame (Pekrun et al. 2006: 585). Before writing a script, the students discussed in several meetings their desire to establish a humorous, light tone that would keep their audience engaged and demystify the Bard. Student 3, who throughout the interview often spoke about reading and learning in terms of emotion, imagined the following transformation upon listening to the episode. “I would feel a bit of confusion, maybe anxiety…Maybe a certain sense of anticipation...Then, a view [that] we’ve tried to [present] the topic with the fun facts. Also a sense of calmness in the sense that, oh, so he [Shakespeare] isn’t actually that big broad scary topic, but he’s actually quite fun to interact with” (interview with Student 3, 2023). When asked to elaborate on the distinction between anxiety and anticipation, she responded that “anxiety is…being scared and dreading the interaction…and anticipation is connected to excitement and wanting to know more about the topic” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The richness and variation of emotion in this imagined encounter with Shakespeare and podcast episode is notable. The student- creators were closely identified with their audience, having been there themselves mere years earlier, and were able to articulate conflicting emotions. This acknowledgment that intense, contradictory emotions coexist while reading is borne out by research, particularly in Pekrun et al’ work in developing the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (2010) and in several studies measuring student emotions (Meyer & Turner 2006; Graesser & D’Mello 2012; McBride & Sweeney 2019). Podcast elements and their origins In imagining an audience similar to themselves, the student-creators drew extensively on their own experiences reading Shakespeare. Within the interviews, their comments fell into three categories, namely reading in high school, independently, and at university. In all three categories, the interviewees commented on instruction, text difficulty, and learning strategies. As referenced in the introduction, this created a fertile environment for reflection. The elements included in the podcast, which were informed by Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 157 their experiences, can be categorized into content, in the form of discrete sections, and strategies, which run throughout the episode. The content sections include historical context, “fun facts,” which will be examined together, and the summary of Hamlet. The strategies are slang and direct address to the audience, which often took the form of the acknowledgement of possible audience emotions around reading Shakespeare, and will be addressed in a separate section below. a. Historical context After a brief introduction, the historical context was designed to situate the reader in Shakespeare’s era in a brief and amusing manner. This section overlaps significantly with what the student-creators called “fun facts,” which usually took the form of contemporary connections. Students 1 and 2 both mentioned their lack of interest in history, while also acknowledging the necessity of understanding something of the historical situation in which a text was written. In the podcast, they attempted to help their listener understand historical context through contemporary connections, such as mentioning that Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, shares a name with a contemporary actress. In the interview, Student 1 explained this decision: “I am not really interested in history because I kind of don’t get the point because it’s the past. It doesn’t really change anything to our daily lives now. So to have a modern or…a contemporary reference to your daily life nowadays, I think that helps you appreciate that the writer had this kind of influence or still has this kind of influence. It gives me a purpose, I guess” (interview with Student 1, 2023). This statement tracks with McBride and Sweeney’s notion that it is important for students to be able to understand the purpose of reading when the text is required and not independently chosen by the reader. Here, Student 1 indicates that motivation on the part of the reader can be increased by connecting the historical context, and therefore the author and his text, to the contemporary reader. Student 2 noted the absence of those very connections in their high school reading, stating “…there wasn’t anything outside of literature connected to the poems or the short stories or anything we treated in the classroom. So I felt like as we did literature in school, it was just disconnected from anything else we did” (interview with Student 2, 2023). In reflecting on this experience, Student 2 is able to correct this mistake in the inclusion of many real-world and contemporary connections in the podcast episode. It should be acknowledged that the connection cited above, of the two Anne Hathaways, is a rather superficial one, mostly likely designed to make the listener laugh or express surprise, rather than ponder Shakespeare’s continuing relevance. However, the student-creators thought deeply about this problem of the potential alienation on the part of the reader due to the historical remove and included other more meaningful connections elsewhere in the episode. This sensitivity is, in part, due to direct experience. Rachel Pole 158 Student 4 reported that, in reading literature in high school, “the teacher knew that reading was good for your English and you had to do the reading. But she did not put a lot of effort into these questions or the choosing of the book. And the students felt just the same way that they just had to get it over with” (interview with Student 4, 2023). This observation tracks with Pekrun’s theory of control-value, wherein the achievement emotion activated here was boredom, a negative deactivating feeling that can be detrimental to the reading process (2010: 38). Student 4 also cited the lack of discussion of literature in high school classes as creating the sense that the texts were beneficial in an isolated, difficult-to-understand way that did little to engage either the students or the instructor (interview with Student 4, 2023). In contrast, all four student-creators credited at least one university class with helping them to understand how a text can be read within its historical context. Despite citing initial challenges reading The Tempest in a literature seminar, Student 4 stated “…we talked about it and I really got into the minds of the authors who lived hundreds of years ago…. And this caused me to just get to know people who lived that long ago…and that sometimes even these people…thought the same way or were even more modern than we are” (interview with Student 4, 2023). In the podcast episode, Student 4 used the terms “dead and dusty” in both the introduction and the conclusion of the podcast to set up the episode’s content in opposition to “standard” history. In the interview, she explained the inclusion of these terms was “because we pictured the students who have this image of Shakespeare who’s just dead for a very long time and not really they’re not able to relate to them. So we wanted them [the authors] to become alive again” (interview with Student 4, 2023). This desire to resurrect Shakespeare in the minds of his young, contemporary readers explains some of the humorous comments (“a ladies’ man,” as said in podcast episode by Student 4); by peppering the listener with these funny, flippant comments, the student-creators want to create a living image of the Bard. Further, the student-creators were priming the listeners for more thought-provoking connections to come. While both of the following two examples fall outside of the section dealing with historical context, one can see how they are clearly part of the student-creator’s attempt to deal with relevance. The episode is light on historical facts, dates, and figures, and instead dedicates more space to “giving purpose,” as Student 1 put it, to the reading of texts produced in the distant past. The first example is a brief discussion of the 1994 animated Disney movie The Lion King, which is a retelling of the plot of Hamlet, accompanied by exclamations of surprise and agreement by the hosts. Again, in the interviews, Student 3 explained this in terms of helping students to understand Shakespeare’s tragedy: “If you have that sense of, oh, wow, even The Lion King is inspired by Shakespeare’s story or even other 2000s movies are inspired by Shakespeare’s stories. So Shakespeare isn’t just some author back in the 16th century, but Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 159 he’s still in a lot of movies” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The omnipresence of Shakespeare’s work in contemporary culture, in the student- creators’ conception, was a powerful engine of not just motivation, but understanding. It seems as if, without explicitly saying so, the student-creators think that if students can identify certain universal themes or plots in Shakespeare’s work, such as power and familial tension as in Hamlet, they can find their way into the text. The second example of a more thoughtprovoking connection also speaks to the timelessness of Shakespeare’s work, focusing on his language. The Selena Gomez song “Kill Em With Kindness” is referenced as an example of the ubiquity of Shakespeare’s language even in the works of a contemporary pop singer (Gomez, 2015). The student-creators discuss not only the sheer number of Shakespearean expressions used today, but also marvel at the brevity and wit of the paradoxical expression in the podcast episode. Here, they are making another implicit appeal to their audience; not only are the themes of Shakespeare’s work still relevant today, but the language is timeless as well. b. Plot summary Another essential element of the podcast was the summary of Hamlet, a play all of them had read, delivered as a humorous monologue by Speaker 3 in the final third of the episode. Several of the student-creators discussed their previous experience with using summary as a tool for comprehending a difficult text, Shakespeare in particular. Student 1 reported positively on a high school media project in which he and groupmates were assigned to present the plot of Hamlet in a creative way. “[I]t was really nice for me because I’ll probably never forget Hamlet’s plot because it kind of got drilled into us.... But I like the way the teacher did it because I like to do assignments like these where you have to do a lot more work, but it’s just fun” (interview with Student 1, 2023) He also reported that they read an adapted version of Hamlet, “in an easier language [sic],” which furthered his understanding. His sense of accomplishment and enjoyment (“more work, but it’s just fun”) lead to a feeling of mastery (“I’ll probably never forget”) (interview with Student 1, 2023). In their work on enhancing learning, Bjork and Bjork found that when students are asked to generate information, rather than simply looking it up, they are much more likely to retain that information, particularly when the generation is repeated several times (2011: 61). Essentially, Student 1 is correct in that he probably will never forget the plot of Hamlet; in retrieving that information for this high school project, and then again for the podcast episode, he has cemented its place in his memory. Student 3, when discussing her positive experience reading The Taming of the Shrew in high school, explicitly stated that knowing the plot beforehand increased her appreciation of a theater performance thereof. She described this in contrast to some of her class- Rachel Pole 160 mates who “found it [the performance] boring…But I think for many, reading the play beforehand was also giving it away…they wanted to be surprised or just go there and not know the ending…but I didn’t mind” (interview with Student 3, 2023). Here, she is tacitly acknowledging reading for purposes or pleasures other than plot; seen from a different light, the knowledge of the plot facilitates understanding and enjoying the text during the performance. Summary continued to be an important tool for the student-creators after high school. Student 1, who characterizes himself as a highly motivated “English nerd,” decided to read Macbeth independently in preparation for a university course (interview with Student 1, 2023). After quickly encountering confusion, he searched online for a brief summary, one that did not include many details, which he felt he would easily forget. Returning to Macbeth, he felt he not only understood the play, but enjoyed it as well. He employed the same strategy in subsequent reading of Shakespeare during a university course. As described by Clifford in his work on risktaking while learning, Student 1 seems to be showing the characteristics of an academic risk-taker in that he tolerates failure, is capable of using various strategies in the face of difficulty, and prefers challenging tasks (1991: 264). Similarly, when Student 3, who characterizes herself as a passionate reader, encountered difficulties in reading Shakespeare, she looked for plot summaries online. She describes this experience as a journey through different emotions: “My initial reaction was, okay, great [sarcastic]. I’m reading one of the most famous authors and I can’t get it and I had a lot of issues with the words...And then the story, I couldn’t follow along because of those uncertainties…and I then went on to Google and tried to find a good summary of the book…and it made much more sense” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The experience of not understanding, in combination with her appreciation for Shakespeare’s importance, seems to have momentarily challenged her conception of herself. However, her motivation and resourcefulness led her to consult summaries online which then allowed her to return to the text successfully. For both Student 1 and 3, experiencing a challenging moment in a subject they considered themselves proficient in left a lasting impact. It forced them to reconsider their “readerly identities,” to use McBride and Sweeney’s term, and thus helped define the strategies they implicitly recommend to other students by including them in the podcast episode (2019: 56). These experiences in and out of various classrooms clearly informed the student-creators’ decision to include a summary of Hamlet in the episode. In all interviews, summary was discussed as a tool to further understanding, tacitly acknowledging that challenging texts such as Hamlet require not only resourcefulness on the part of the reader but also an awareness that such texts demand various skills and an awareness of reading for different purposes. It seems that the students agree that developing an understanding of the plot does not have to only come from reading the text; plot Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 161 comprehension can be outsourced by watching videos or reading summaries online. Then the text can be returned to for a close examination of language, an understanding of character, or a more detailed familiarity with the plot. In providing a summary, the student-creators set out to build a foundation upon which the listeners could build deeper understanding. c. Slang and direct address Throughout both the summary and the historical context sections of the podcast, the student-creators relied on two strategies to create an engaging tone that would appeal to their audience, namely slang and direct address to their audience. The student-creators deployed both of the strategies for two purposes simultaneously. First, given that their purpose was to inspire “excitement,” or if not possible “engagement,” because, in the words of Student 2, entertainment was nearly as important as education throughout (interview with Student 2, 2023). A swift pace, created by the focus on general information mentioned in the section on summary above, and humor, created using slang, were two of the factors meant to entertain their audience. The second purpose of these strategies was to encourage identification between student-creators and the audience. This identification has been discussed in previous sections, but here in the use of slang and direct address, we can see the student-creators most clearly trying to establish credibility with their listeners. The student-creators, as discussed above, are clearly positioning themselves as an intermediary between the imagined instructor, who inhabits the expert role, and the learner. Douglas et al, in their study of reading resilience in tertiary literary studies, use the term ‘coaching’ to reimagine the role of the university instructor who, instead of being the expert, is the guide in developing student reading skills (2015: 3). Perhaps, we can imagine the student-creators inhabiting the role of coach, or even assistant coach, who can motivate listeners to ‘play along.’ As such, the student-creators need to implicitly convince the learner-aslistener to identify with the podcast voices as student proxies. The struggles with the text are shared, the slang is shared, the cultural references are shared; if this is achieved, then solutions may be shared as well. The use of slang is particularly evident in the summary, where it was intended to create both humor and credibility. In the episode, Student 3 referred to “our girl Ophelia” or the audience as “kids,” borrowing the casual, fast-paced patter of material on social media, such as Tik-Tok videos, that often include slang adopted from Black American culture. She also used humorous flourishes also recognizable from contemporary online discourse, such as understatement (“the Prince is obviously not thrilled”) or therapy-speak (“Dude has some issues. I would recommend a therapist”) (“Hamlet,” 2023). The juxtaposition of the complex, culturally revered plot of Hamlet and Student 3’s slang-laden, facetious tone is meant to not just Rachel Pole 162 inspire laughter, but also create a bit of a transgressive thrill. Recalling Student 1’s comments that the hosts are fellow students, not “adult experts,” (interview with Student 1, 2023) the description of Fortinbras as a “hunky dude” should prove to the audience that our hosts do not take any of this too seriously and therefore are to be trusted (“Hamlet,” 2023). The heavy sprinkling of slang, irreverence, and sarcasm signal to the listener that this challenging, august text can be understood and played with at the same time. I also interpret this humorous retelling as an echo of the student-creators’ positive memories of reading or discussing Shakespeare in the classroom. Student 3 was sensitive to unique properties of plays and particularly cited reading the play aloud in class as a successful strategy. Similarly to Student 1, she appreciated doing something other than “the usual teaching…we were just interacting… It almost came to life much easier when we were at it together” (interview with Student 3, 2023). In both Student 1’s and Student 3’s positive experiences, interaction with their peers lent a vibrancy to the reading that facilitated understanding, retention, and enjoyment. While they did not state this explicitly, these memories clearly informed their intentions. When actual exchange between the listener and podcast-hosts was not feasible, the student-creators’ tone was designed to replicate the experience of talking to a peer (albeit a well-read one) about the Bard. This direct address to the audience, implicit in the use of slang that peers can easily understand, becomes explicit elsewhere in the podcast episode. In setting up the summary of Hamlet in the podcast episode, Student 4 explains the purpose of what follows: “Let’s have a quick look at one of his most famous plays which you, my dear listeners, are very likely to encounter during your academic career and will, thanks to our podcast, not have such a hard time with. You are welcome” (“Hamlet,” 2023)! Here, she nearly states the thesis of the project in a light-hearted manner, referencing the title of the series with “dear listener” while also parodying a more formal tone. This style of peer-to-peer communication is also informed by the student-creators’ sense that interaction with fellow students about Shakespeare’s work was both meaningful and entertaining. This speaks to Douglas et al’s observation that in-class conversations, student- student and teacher-student, about literary texts lead to better results in term papers and contribute to overall student satisfaction (2015: 11). As previously mentioned, all four student-creators reported positively on the discussion of in university courses, and particularly highlighted that illuminating information often came from their peers, rather than solely the instructor. Student 3 stated “it [reading passages in class together] made it more fun to interact with the book instead of just everyone reading it alone and then just discussing the book. In the interaction directly with the story, everyone was able to also put in their own emotions and how they would feel” (interview with Student 3, 2023). The interaction, with the instructor, Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 163 peers, and text, seems to be part of Student 3’s enjoyment, which in Pekrun’s theory stands in opposition to boredom in that it is a positive activating emotion (2006: 586). The student-creators tried to recreate this sense of engagement, and therefore, enjoyment, in speaking to their audience as peers, using the first-person plural, and directly addressing what the audience might be feeling. This acknowledgement of feeling also occurs in respect to negative emotions as well. Early in the episode, Student 3 refers to Shakespeare as “the utter nightmare of us students” (“Hamlet”, 2023). Here, as in the previous example from the episode, we see the student-creators recognize the challenges their audience faces in reading. The overstatement above is said with a wink but also a comforting hand on the arm; the hosts know what it is like to be intimidated and overwhelmed and they are here to help. The facetiousness is belied by a sincere appeal to the struggling student because all of the student-creators have been confronted with the “nightmare” quite recently. Student 2, who identified as a non-reader, had particularly vivid memories of reading Shakespeare in high school. Her negative experience was at least partly shaped by a teacher’s choice to read the original play in class and translate it into German line-by-line. Student 2 characterized the reading as “hard and really intense because when I usually read a piece of literature or a poem, it doesn’t take me 2 hours…I was kind of afraid that every single piece of literature we’re treating was going to be the same thing” (interview with Student 2, 2023). Boredom, caused by the perceived lack of relevance, and frustration, induced by the reader’s perception of the exercise as tedious and arcane, were products of this encounter (Graesser & D’Mello 2012: 241). This painstaking approach of translating led to lasting anxiety on Student 2’s part and created the sense among her peers that “when this is going to be part of our test sooner or later, right, we’re going to be messed up” (interview with Student 2, 2023). Taken together, the interviewee perceived this reading experience as not only challenging, but impenetrable and lacking in relevance outside of the imagined, fear-inducing assessment (Graesser & D’Mello 2012: 238). Thus, in creating the podcast episode, the student-creators were speaking to their former selves, particularly in light of Student 2’s experiences. Although they characterize Shakespeare as a nightmare, a close look at their interview comments reveal that the real trouble lies in some of the apparatus of formal learning, like dry activities and assessments with little connection to the world outside the classroom. By alluding to the negative emotions the audience might be bringing to the episode, the student-creators draw the audience further into identification with “us students” and offer up a bit of comfort. This process described above reflects Poletti et al’s observations on readerly hospitality as posited by Attridge. Poletti et al. argue that this framework allows students and instructors to recognize the fundamentally challenging nature of reading difficult literary texts by “making reading visible as a process, as a challenging and as a worthwhile Rachel Pole 164 pursuit” (2016: 242). By explicitly naming some of the challenges in the podcast episode, the student-creators model some of their own affective experience, going beyond a solutions-based, best practice approach. Put another way, their podcast episode could potentially help with addressing the issue that “the difficulty of difficulty is not that it is difficult but that we do not face the difficulty soon enough” (Adams as qtd. in Chicks et al. 2009: 401). If “we” in this context refers to instructors, confronting not just the difficulty but also the attendant emotions could alleviate some of the negative outcomes like boredom or frustration on the students’ part. The student-creators crafted a document that does just this. They acknowledge and model the anticipation, anxiety, hope, and pride that reading a challenging literary text can evoke. Inspiring in their listener the courage required to invite such an experience is very much part of the purpose of this close identification (Poletti et al. 2016: 241). An implicit appeal in the podcast is ‘if we can do it, so can you.’ Given the obvious pleasure the student-creators take in their episode’s banter, insights, anecdote, and jokes, a second, convincing message is also and you should. 5. Conclusion After observing the student-creators at work, a few conclusions can be made for the instructor looking for answers as to how to encourage the tolerance for, and perhaps optimistically, the enjoyment of, difficult literary texts. The student-creators clearly focused on a few practical strategies, such as using summaries and making contemporary connections, that can be adopted as support structures for the student reading difficult literary texts like Shakespeare. They created a resource themselves in the form of a podcast, which should remind instructors of the broad selection of podcasts, video and other media that can be used as preparatory or support material. Perhaps even more interestingly, the student-creators also adopted and modeled an attitude essential in an encounter with a challenging text. As instructors, we should appreciate that the student-creators aimed to prepare, entertain, and excite the reader rather than replace the work of reading and understanding. We should also note that, while the summary did include an overview of the plot, the purpose of the podcast was not to make Shakespeare ‘easier,’ which implies simplifying complexity to facilitate swift understanding, but rather to make Shakespeare ‘less frightening’ in the words of Student 3. The student-creators demonstrate here an understanding that much of what is at stake when we task students with difficult reading is emotional. By acknowledging and playing with this affective dimension of reading, the student-creators signal solidarity with their listener, offering the prospect of a peaceful night in the place of nightmares. Observations on student encounters with difficult literary texts 165 Nightmares, used by Student 3 tongue-in-cheek to describe students’ feeling towards reading Shakespeare, occur to each individual alone, in the disorientating dark. If we share the symbols, affects, confusion held therein, as our student-creators have, then not only do we fear them less but we can begin to understand more about the stories that surround us. References Allen, Ira J. (2012). Reprivileging reading. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 12 (1): 97-120. Bjork, Elizabeth L. & Robert Bjork (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In: Morton Ann Gernsbacher (Ed.). Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society. 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Verdorfer, Alex (Student 1). 1 March 2023. Personal interview. Rachel Pole University of Innsbruck