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"Group groping," a classroom activity in which discussion units of five to seven students search into a text (play, essay, poem or short story) to illuminate a problem posed by the teacher, is a way of making discussions both teacher-directed and student-centered. After a class has read a work, the teacher provides background information to initiate the assignment. The various groups then search for specifics in the work under study, share their findings through oral reports made by group spokesmen, and compose papers based on their search. Some benefits of this approach include heightened student enthusiasm over the works covered and students' ability to gain access to new works. (A diagram of a teacher-directed group study of a literary work and an illustration of this approach using a symbolic analysis of Richard Wright's "The Man from Underground" are included.) (DD)