Many students now entering college have read so little as to be classed "preliterate," making the problems of teaching the classics of narrative fiction complex. An analysis of the relationship between reading and speech implies that students must begin in childhood with a rich oral culture; those who have been strangers to discourse are not likely to become readers. Because our oral culture has been vitiated by the widespread use of language to inform and persuade, rather than to delight and invoke magic, we lack a common store of folktales and a common mythology. Yet, college students are still responsive to the spoken word, greedy for narrative, and susceptible to enchantment; they can be reached by the instructor telling stories aloud or by reading from sources such as ancient mythology, the Book of Genesis, and the Brothers Grimm. The assumption is that in following the speaker's images and turns of phrase, tone of voice, and narrative thread, the listener engages in the imaginative interplay that leads to literacy. (CC)