[Kara Moloney, 2001]
Reading, like writing, is a form of thinking in which students discover, learn, and clarify their ideas and experiences. By encouraging students to develop a recursive, critical approach to reading, we encourage the same in their writing. Ann Berthoff's metaphor of laundry is useful: "Composing is seen to be analogous to a linear process like laundering, in which you have to separate the socks from the shorts first, set the dials first, put in the soap first-and then do this and then that" (25). Explain that while reading is generally thought of as a linear process (left to right, top to bottom), the process of making meanings with text is not.
Readers construct the meaning of the texts they read by degrees, just as writers gradually construct the meaning of experiences they write about. Ask your students to get in the habit of questioning and making connections in (and between) their reading and writing. Similar to writers approaching a paper, encourage your students to do a first "draft" reading, in which they begin to formulate their opinions on the text. Then they follow that with a "revised" reading, which requires more engagement and critical thinking.
start where they live
When Ann Berthoff advises to begin where the students are, she asks us to acknowledge that "they [too] are . . . language animals, endowed with the form-finding and form-creating powers of mind and language" (9). Consider that our different life experiences will always influence the ways we read. Remember that every time you return to a text, your experience of it will be different. Remember, also, that each person's experience of a text is unique. Just because you love an essay and want your students to love it too, does not mean that they will. Keep in mind that they bring years of reading experience into the classroom-honor what they know. Ask them to articulate why and how they read differently. Don't be afraid to learn from them.
TRY THIS!
"Teach students how to think, not what to think." --Kathleen McCormick
Ask students to bring in texts from their own lives (magazines, textbooks, videos, music) and ask them to ask the same questions of those texts that they would of the essays you assign, or of the essays they write for class. Who is the audience? What is the purpose? What techniques and strategies did the author use to achieve her or his goals?
Don't assume that first- or second-year students understand or have access to the same strategies we might employ when we encounter "tough" readings. Deborah Brandt writes about the ways literacy "piles up" (165). Remember that students may not have accumulated, or piled up, as much literacy with academic texts as you have. New graduate students' experiences are similar to first-year students': all of a sudden, you're reading types of writing you may not have encountered before. So be honest about your own experiences; share your techniques. Show them the annotations you've made in a book you're reading so they can see what you mean when you say "engage in a conversation with the text." Don't be afraid of saying, "I don't actually know what the author meant here."
TRY THIS!
"Use difficulties as opportunities, not obstacles" --Mariolina Salvatori
Ask students to write "Difficulty Papers" in which they explore the obstacles to their comprehension or enjoyment of the assigned texts. Students should delve into why they are having difficulty (quote from the text, do outside research) rather than rely on, "I just don't get it." These essays (which can be as short as one page) encourage students to be actively involved in, and reflexive about, their reading activities.
read to them (every day)
Berthoff equates reading, writing, listening, and speaking as acts of mind (42). Give your students an opportunity to engage all of those elements. Unfortunately, after about the fifth grade, most teachers stop reading to students. As we get older, our listening skills often weaken. Read to your students to sharpen their listening skills and to help them begin to distinguish what different voices sound like-the voice you hear when you read an essay may be different than the one they hear.
TRY THIS!
Read an essay or short story aloud in class. Ask students to listen as you read and to be prepared to ask "deep" questions about the reading after you finish. Prepare them for the types of questions you'll be expecting. What's going on in the essay? What is the author's main point? Ask students to answer the questions-don't be the only person who has an opinion! If you model this activity as a group, students can apply these techniques to their own reading acts. (Thanks to Dr. Shane Templeton, Director, Center for Literacy and Learning, College of Education, for this activity.)
remember that the best learning takes place in a social context
Wayne Booth believes that "knowledge is not something discovered by the isolated self in its interaction with the physical world. Rather, knowledge arises through interaction between selves" (qtd. Brent 7). Many of us understand (and possibly believe) that learning is a social phenomenon. To incorporate that understanding, we should engage in a social process of making knowledge together in our classrooms.
Talk about the readings often and encourage students to voice their opinions. Engage students in discussion by posing challenging-but not unanswerable-questions about the readings. In small reading groups, ask students to pose questions that they think will stimulate discussion in the larger groups. Give students the opportunity to talk about their reactions to the readings in small and large groups.
"We live in a historical moment when the media on which the world relies are changing their nature and extending their range to an extent not seen since the invention of movable type" (O'Donnell 9). It is likely that many of our students have already adjusted to the changes that James O'Donnell discusses. As the written word shifts media (once again), we are presented with the opportunity to discuss and discover how those changes influence the ways we read and write. Richard Lanham argues that because our culture already operates nonlinearly, hypertext is a natural development (129-30). Many teachers have already integrated other types of texts such as video and music into their classrooms. Lanham and O'Donnell urge us to expand our instruction to include electronic (hyperlinked) texts.
Look at the reality of students' lives; the media that fill their
world (television, video, film, email, the Web, etc.) are often much
more compelling-to them, at least-than books. What we need to understand
is that reading is not limited to words on a page. I believe that
it is important that our students learn to read all media critically,
from an essay by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., to advertisements for Taco Bell.
Berthoff, Ann. The Making of Meaning: Metaphors, Models, and Maxims for
Writing Teachers. Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1981.
Brandt, Deborah. “Accumulating Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write
in the Twentieth Century.” College English 57 (October 1995): 649-68.
Brent, Doug. Reading as Rhetorical Invention: Knowledge, Persuasion, and
the Teaching of Research-based Writing. Urbana: NCTE, 1994.
Qualley, Donna. “Using Reading in the Writing Classroom.” Nuts& Bolts:
A Practical Guide to Teaching College Composition. Ed. Thomas Newkirk. Portsmouth,
NH: Boynton/Cook, 1995. 101-28.
Salvatori, Mariolina. “Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching
of Composition.” College English 58 (April 1996): 440-54.
Scholes, Robert. Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English.
New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1985.
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