Reading and Teaching Irony in Poetry: Giving Short People a Reason To Live.

Because so little research has been conducted on methods of teaching literature, two separate but related studies were conducted to (1) examine what it means to understand stable irony, and (2) to compare two methods, direct and tacit, of teaching stable irony. A 36-item test, comprised of questions about 7 ironic poems and 2 nonironic poems, calibrated for difficulty according to Rasch analysis, was administered to 514 students. In addition, 4 experienced high school English teachers and 12 students were interviewed and asked to respond to 2 other ironic poems. Results of the written test showed that the ironic items were in general more difficult to explicate than the nonironic items. The interviews suggested that the students had difficulty detecting the presence of irony. Four high school teachers and their classes participated in the second study comparing the direct method of teaching irony, based on metacognition and Booth's (1974) four steps of reconstructing irony, and the tacit method, which gives students more exposure to ironic poems. Control groups were given no specific instruction on irony. Results showed that the direct and tacit methods achieved a statistically significant difference in comparison with the control groups, but that there is little statistical significance between direct and tacit methods. The study suggests that college bound high school students need to be instructed in reading skills, to prevent misreading, and researchers might look into the effectiveness of small group work versus large group work. The test used in the study is appended. (JC)