This paper seeks to articulate the understanding of transactional/reader-response as theory and its use in the language classroom as both teaching philosophy and pedagogy. First, I map the terrain of reader-response theory, its history, in general, and how it has been articulated in literary studies, in particular. Next, I briefly synthesise studies that sought to empirically study reader response in the classroom and question why these inevitably fail to engage meaningfully with it -and seem to instead only result in teacher "lesson plan" ideas.

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