I believe in literature. My students, however, liken reading to working out, saying that while it might be good for you, it doesn’t feel good.
I want to change their minds. Reading, I think, is an inherently pleasurable activity, and it is also good for us. For literature entertains, creates myth, increases our capacity for compassion and imagination. It makes us better writers, better communicators, and more evolved humans. I don’t think I’m overstating my case.
The question then becomes, what has gone wrong? Why do incoming freshman feel that reading is painful, difficult, and scary? It seems to me that it is the type of reading, and the style of reading instruction that has turned reading into a frightening chore. I’m not alone in this assessment. Mariolina Salvatori wrote an article in Double Helix way back in 1996 where she observed how many literature as well as composition classes teach a “particularly enervated, atrophied kind of reading. A reading immobilized in textbooks (Salvatori 442). This kind of static, lifeless approach to text tends to leave students cold and depressed. Furthermore, we have made reading into a contest of speed, emphasizing “skimming and scanning” and passive regurgitation of facts (Newkirk, 37). As if that weren’t enough, it isn’t working. Ellen Carillo writes of studies conducted in 2013 and 2015 showing that “close to half of college students in their samples did not meet minimum benchmarks for literacy” (Carillo 2). Overwhelmed and over-tested, students turn on reading. They come to college ready to hand down their own assessment: “reading sucks.”
But it doesn’t have to. If we could remove some of that baggage, stop our demands for speed and hold off the tests of comprehension, some students might be able to return to stories as the entertainment the author intended. Thomas Newkirk makes just this plea in his book Slow Reading, writing that if we slow down, we can demand less and ask for more. Less skim and scan; more engagement and curiosity. Slow reading, he writes, “has to do with the relationship we have with what we read, with the quality of attention that we bring to our reading, with the investment we are willing to make. It is based on the belief that good writing is never fully consumed, never fully understood, and although we often read for the efficient extraction of information, this extraction is not the most meaningful or pleasurable reading we do” (Newkirk 2). Slow reading allows the text to breathe, to speak, to live.
In light of my own slow reading of the academic discourse, I have begun to formulate some questions about the teaching of reading, most of which center around pleasure and efficacy:
- Is reading pleasurable?
- Does assigning a reading make it less pleasurable?
- How closely connected are reading and writing?
- Can you connect the act of reading to the act of writing in a systematic, useful way?
- Can you measure the results of reading?
- Do reading different genres, or lengths, or the kinds of activities attached to reading make a difference in its efficacy?
- Is there a point of diminishing returns? Too many activities? Too much reading?
Methods:
There are two parts to this methods section. First is how to build curriculum that features reading and the connection between reading and writing. Second is how to measure the results of this curriculum.
Before getting started, it seems worthwhile to mention that there is some disagreement in the scholarship on just how connected the practice of reading and writing really is. Tracy Hallstead and Glenda Pritchard write, based on their own research, that “writing and reading are intertwined in the learning process and cannot be separated cognitively” (Hallstead and Pritchard, 1). Mariolina Salvatori, on the other hand, writes that “interconnectedness is a highly constructed, unnatural, obtrusive activity” (Salvatori 445). While these two views may seem rather far apart—are reading and writing connected or not?—I think it can be both. Reading and writing may very well be connected in the brain, but those pathways and connections are not accessible unless repeated. Through training and repetition, we reinforce these neural paths, creating that single act of literacy that Hallstead and Pritchard speak of. For students that hate reading, the connection may be tenuous and the pathways will have to be illuminated. And that can feel unnatural.
So we must start from the beginning. The first step is to learn how to read closely, how to engage. In this process, annotations are a great tool, for they can make visible the act of reading. Annotations provide a kind of map of students’ reading and provide an opportunity for metacognitive analysis as well as allowing students to “make texts uniquely theirs” (Carillo 4). So, the first day, I will give them a set of annotations symbols that we will work with throughout the class. I’m thinking pretty basic here: Check=I agree; X=I disagree; ?=I don’t get it; !=I like it (Newkirk 94). We will talk about underlining and writing in the margins. We will not be using highlighters. Our first text will be my syllabus.
After annotation will be key-word analysis and selected quotations. The idea here is to start noticing how certain words or phrases provide insight into a work as a whole, to begin that process of connection and discovery that close reading entails (Newkirk 95-99).
Next in our progression will be short passage response papers. We will write two or three (perhaps in class) responses to a paragraph from our current reading. Here students will learn to engage with texts and “talk back” to them. We will start to put ourselves in conversation with our texts (Carillo 5-6).
Next, in preparation for our own writing, we will begin to use some of the Reading As A Writer (RAAW) techniques. We will use our annotation keys to discuss some of the bigger picture ideas of writing, focusing on authorial choices and motivation, as well as points of structure and analysis (Tremmel 121-123).
Finally, we will work up to producing our own substantial piece of writing. This begins with the research project and the creation of a poster, and culminates in a final writing project in a genre of their choice.
For purposes of consistency and developing a practice, I want every week to have a reading attached to it. I would like to visit four or five main genres along the way. Preliminarily, I have laid it out as follows (further details in appendix A):
Weeks 1, 2: Literacy Narratives (memoir)
Week 3: Fiction
Week 4: Essay (narrative non-fiction)
Week 5: Research (academic non-fiction, source #1)
Week 6: Research (academic non-fiction, source #2)
Weeks 7: Poetry
Week 8: Research (with focus on the creation of their own writing—the poster)
Week 9: Poster showcase! (reading group selection)
Weeks, 10, 11: small groups, self-selecting, reading by genre
After visiting each genre in the first part of the course, students will choose a genre in which to read further, and to ultimately write their culminating project in the style of.
There are a few techniques we can try in order to have a sense of whether any of this focus on reading is resonating or proving useful. First, I will give my students the questions listed in the first section in the first week as a survey. At the end of the quarter, we will revisit these same questions and see if (how) their thoughts and feelings have changed. Here I will primarily be looking at whether they might feel differently. Will any of them come to enjoy reading? Here is a way we can find out.
Second, I will have them write a reading reflection blog post in class on our computer lab days (Wednesday). The prompt will be vague, and I will not grade these entries. I will be looking to see if their reading and writing-about-reading habits will change over time and through my teaching. We will see if certain readings will prompt more response or if response can become more engaged (and engaging) as the class goes on. The posts will be a great way to track change over time. Or to see if there is no change.
Throughout the quarter, we will check in on annotation techniques, having students come up to the doc cam to show their reading. The annotations, tracked in this way, can show over time if they are becoming more engaged, more curious, more attentive as readers.
Finally, I will have my students produce a piece of writing in the style of one of the works they read. This is how I will see if their reading has had an impact on them as writers. This is also how I hope to engage them on the concept of regarding their own work as equal to, existing alongside of, rather than subordinate to the things they read. This final project will be a chance to show the connection between reading and writing and whether our reading throughout the quarter has had an impact on my students in terms of how they think, read, and write.
Works Cited:
Carillo, Ellen C. “Engaging Sources through Reading-Writing Connections Across the Disciplines.” Across the Disciplines, 13:1, July 2016, 1-19. Web.
Hallstead, Tracy, and Pritchett, Glenda. “Reading: The Bridge to Everywhere.” Double Helix, vol. 1, 2013, 1-12. Web.
Newkirk, Thomas. The Art of Slow Reading: Six Time-Honored Practices for Engagement. Heinemann, 2012.
Salvatori, Mariolina. “Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition” College English 58:4, April 1996, 440-454. Web.
Tremmel, Michelle. “Forget Formulas: Teaching Form through Function in Slow Writing and Reading as a Writer.” Composition Studies, 45:2, Fall 2017, 113–129. Web.
Appendix A: A rough daily chart of the quarter
Appendix B: A potential project substitution
Project 2: Fictional Literacy Narrative
What’s the project?
You will take your literacy narrative and transform it into a work of fiction. You may either write a new, completely fictional literacy narrative or retell your literacy narrative from the point of view of your literacy sponsor.
How do I format it?
Regardless of which path you choose, you should use sensory details, point of view, dialogue, and the narrative arc of a story.
You should make paragraph breaks and dialogue breaks, showing an understanding of how to tell an interesting story through writing.
It should be approximately 500 words (1-2 pages).
Submitting the project
You should submit the finished project as a post on the class WordPress. Use the category label “literacy-fiction,” and also add 3 tags with keywords related to your post.
When is it due?
A complete rough draft of your story is due for workshop on ?? ?/?. The final project will be due on WordPress by 11:59pm ??/??.
How do I know it’s complete?
(These are the questions I will ask when I evaluate your finished narrative)
- Does your story contain multiple sensory elements that combine in complex ways?
- Does your story describe an arc: a beginning, middle, and end?
- Does your story contain dialogue with appropriate use of punctuation?
- Does your story have a voice and an interesting narrative point of view?
- Does your post make use of appropriate category labels and keyword tags?
Appendix C: A potential culmination project:
Project 8: Culminating Writing Project
What’s the project?
- You will select a genre and form a reading group.
- You will select and read two pieces of writing in your genre
- As a group, you will build a WordPress webtext as the platform for your individual work.
- As a group, you will finish your grading rubric and agree on the criteria by which your individual work will be assessed
- You will create an original piece of writing in your genre (writing here considered as a broad term that may encompass and is not limited to: audio, visual, and text)
What are the genres?
1. Literary non-fiction (memoir or essay)
2. Fiction
3. Poetry
4. Analytical non-fiction (literary or research-based)
You may choose a genre not listed here if you 1) have at least one other classmate interested in pursuing this genre with you, and 2) you find and present two appropriate readings in this genre to me (your instructor).
How is it formatted?
The webtext should be formatted as a WordPress website. You will work together to make this website fit the goals and ambitions of your group.
It should have at least two common pages:
- A Home page: you should decide as a group how you wish to present yourself. Remember this will be the first thing your audience sees
- A Meet the Authors page: see Project 7 for more details
Each of you should also design and create your own individual page showcasing a piece of original work within your genre. As the culmination of the work you have done in this class, it should show an understanding of the conventions of your genre, an awareness of the audience you hope to reach, and some original style of your own. We will discuss page/word length approximations by genre.
When’s it due?
Your WebText should be functioning as a platform by ??/??
Your grading rubrics should be complete by ??/??
Your original writing should be uploaded to your WebText by midnight on ??/??.
How do I know it’s complete?
- Does the webtext show signs of intentional design, including theme, layout, and user navigational elements?
- Does your webtext include multiple pages and fully accessible multimedia elements?
- Does the webtext present a coherent platform to showcase individual original work?
- Does your original work engage with your genre in an interesting way?
- Does your original work represent an intention to speak to an audience?
