Self-Evaluation

IF with its unique structure of narrative pauses, offers special opportunities for direct teaching. However, it also adds an evaluative dimension of considerable instructional power, an element that operates even when the teacher isn't around. How many teachers have felt exasperated at a student's declaration that he or she has completed the reading of a work of literature without understanding it at all? And how many students, at least the more conscientious ones, have felt even more frustrated in the same circumstance? With most IF, though, it is simply impossible, short of getting the problem solutions from someone else, to finish a story without understanding it in some depth. The careless or unskilled reader will become "stuck" on one or more of the problems and will thus be unable to continue beyond a particular point. The aesthetically-placed pauses for problems, then, become, among other things, compelling and integrated reading comprehension tests, perhaps the only such tests that most kids will take voluntarily.

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