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their various linguistic studies such as, reading, grammar, creative writing, etc. My style of running seminars is to strike at every preconception which prevents anyone from meeting the challenge or challenges. Not all participants like it because so many of them identify with their preconceptions and beliefs. But if they stand the strain of being exposed, they usually enjoy their victory and leave better equipped to work on something that matters to them. Unless I learn much myself, my seminars are not counted as good. The questions I face are either concerned with seminar techniques always challenged by some newcomer, or with my sensitivity to look at myself at work on the selected theme or attempting to take a radically new way of looking at something I am familiar with. My most successful seminars are those in which I find a new entry into any subject. When I work on an area in which I have been for some time, and I know that the participants may be in it for the first time, my task is to permit them to begin with me as if I knew as little as they do, a kind of starting from scratch even if the problem is profound and difficult. For instance, in the field of reading we may begin by asking ourselves “In how many ways can we relate to texts we look at?� In order to find the count we must develop the criteria which differentiate the act of reading from 1
how we understand speech,
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how we reach meaning in the spoken and written languages,
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how we reach structure and the function of words,
4 how we use contexts to help us know what we do not quite comprehend etc., etc. Every participant who has read before knows that not all reading consists of acquiring information, that all sorts of clues are needed to
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