This essay discusses effective ways of training students, on both undergraduate and graduate levels, in reading fiction in English. The professor needs to have in mind two major goals, namely sustaining students’ interest in reading and helping them delve into the underlying meanings of fiction as embedded in narrative and linguistic forms. Like all other readers, students are naturally drawn to the depictions and suggestions of sophisticated sentiments in the modern novel, which since at least the 18^th century has become the central arena of psychic drama in Western culture. But they need guidance on how to decipher the implications of recurrent imagery, syntactical variation, and shifts in narrative perspectives and structures---all effective ways of getting beneath the surface of fictional writings. Pedagogical practice has proved that, when instructors demonstrate their own techniques of readings with clarity, a majority of students are capable of making remarkable progress in fiction reading.