The chapter “Reading and Writing Are Not Connected” by Ellen Carillo argues that reading and writing are “connected practices… and the best way to teach them is together.”  Carillo complains that writing has been separated from reading in unhelpful ways, especially at the college level.  The college writing course, she argues, has become a place where complex texts are assigned but reading comprehension skills are assumed rather than taught. The suggested remedy is a return to explicit teaching of reading skills alongside writing skills, as is done in early childhood education.

The chapter “Secondary-School English Teachers Should Only Be Taught Literature” by Elizabethada Wright makes an interesting counterpoint to the reading chapter in arguing that rhetoric is at least an equally valuable discipline when teaching writing as traditional English literature. Teachers lacking in rhetoric training have flooded classrooms with incomplete models for the teaching of writing.  When every essay is a literary response, the full spectrum of writing skills is reduced to a very specific and [the author implies] less rigorous format.

To connect these two pieces, I would point to the current trend of incorporating more nonfiction texts into secondary English courses.  Reading skills are now considered more broadly in application than they were when fiction was ascendant in the curriculum.

Striking a balance between the importance of teaching reading and writing continues to be the biggest question for the secondary English teacher.