Perhaps the clearest and most direct way to make the reading and general learning experience more personally relevant, however, is to include an analysis of text-to-self-connections in reading lesson plans and tasks. Not only does this lead explicitly to every individual developing their own context for reading a given text, making them consciously aware of the different perspectives that exist in literature and in the wider world, but a lack of ability to connect to specific texts can bring to light subtle yet profound injustices that might exist in he material chosen in many standard curricula (Boyer 1990). In this way, adjustments can be made in the curriculum and one-on-one discussions (or even classroom discussions) can help individual learners connect with texts even through the disparity in culture, class, or age that they might perceive between themselves and the text. That is, the aspect of this separation can itself be...
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