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Collaborative Practices
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Reader to Author Connection
How can teachers help students make the reader / author connection? By: A. Colleen Doyle
Students-called-basic-readers are only following the ways of reading they’ve been taught. Sometimes, for instance, these readers hope to summarize a lengthy book or difficult article into a few sentences, always trying to pick out the topic sentence. Sometimes contextual clues may be lost on them, as may be the irony or sarcasm. As David Bartholomae says in his essay, The Argument for Reading, “The issue for me is not whether or what students should read, but how?” (245) One goal of combining reading and writing together is to give readers new ways of reading, as modeled by Donald Bartholomae and Petrosky in their many essays. New ways include engaging the author in ways different from the reader’s past habits. Teachers want students to read the text, focusing not on words they don’t know but what they can decipher. And then when they reread or begin to write, we ask them to argue or debate the author, and to back up their argument by “naming names, citing text” as Marcia Dickson puts it. Bartholomae and Petrosky discuss the author/reader connection quite simply and succinctly in Ways of Reading: “As you read, you hear an author’s voice talking to you. You may not understand everything you read (you won’t) and you won’t remember everything you read (you can’t) You just trust that by the end it will make sense. Then you take over as the writer, (and) the author is silent. It is now when you construct what you’ve read through your own filters, your own viewpoint” (273). Research confirms that “reading, responses to reading and arguments about reading” (Dickson, graph 20) encourage the critical thinking skills necessary to future college success. And when this form of debate is modeled in class, it reinforces critical thinking. Plus, isn’t it more interesting to debate an author than take their rhetoric as undeniable truth or as boring garbage? A reader tests what an author is saying by comparing it with her own. Charles Bazerman concurs and expands the thought in “A Relationship Between Reading and Writing: The Conversational Model.” “The independent, critical standpoint the student develops with respect to reading other people’s works . . helps the student frame and revise his or her own writing to be a purposeful and appropriate contribution to an ongoing conversation” (660). When the reader examines how she reads, and when she questions the motives of the author, she makes her mark on the reading and it makes its mark on her (Bartholomae and Petrosky,274). She has become an active, critical reader. And when she composes her reactions to text in her writing, she becomes an active, critical writer as well. The reader must think about what she has read, and must question the author instead of “acquiescing to indisputable authority” (Bazerman, 659). Mariolina Salvatori builds on this, advocating for teachers to make difficulty a central focus of their reading pedagogies. She argues that helping students handle difficulties in texts with “sophisticated and productive ways” is crucial. She says admitting something is difficult is knowledge in itself and advocates focusing and spending time on those moments of difficulty (“Reading”, 199–200). Donna Qualley, in “Using Reading in the Writing Classroom, also argues that when students tackle “messy subjects . . . they experience a new kind of writing . . . that involves a great deal of reading, rereading and thinking.” (108) To become better writers, students need to experience reading that “hones their analytical skills . . . to ask questions and to seek subtle the connections” (112). Best Practices-Reading Strategies * How Are the Teaching of Reading and Writing Connected? Reading instruction has been dominated by two major methods: phonics and whole language. Which is a better method continues to be of great debate in the reading community. There is also a similarity between the phonics approach to reading instruction and the “building block” model of writing development imbedded in texts like Errors and Expectations. In a phonics approach to reading, readers learn to read by learning the sounds of letter combinations, putting these combinations together, and decoding words. As Qualley says, though, it’s an incorrect assumption that if a reader can decode the words, she can read (103). Similarly, in Errors and Expectations, Shaughnessy advocated that the first semester of a BW class should be skills-oriented and that complex reading comprehension wouldn’t come into play until the second semester. She advocated teaching writing in a building-block, sentence-by-sentence style ( page ). In contrast to phonics, the whole language approach to teaching reading stresses that readers don’t need to know every word to read and make sense of the text. Contextual clues and adjoining graphics are used to decipher words and the larger meaning of texts. Similarly, the holistic approach to writing development has writers develop their ideas, meanings, and arguments initially, rather than focusing from the beginning on punctuation and mechanics. The student reader/writer can benefit from examining how she reads and with help from her instructor, can make sense even out of more difficult texts. Like writers, proficient readers also use drafting and revising when reading. We read an article, note what we know and don’t know, then we return to the text and reread for more clarity. Readers figure out the meanings of a reading by many readings, much like writers develop the meaning of our writing by many revisions. * How Can We Use Reading in a Writing Classroom? Choose difficult texts. Most written commentary on this subject agrees that it does little justice to the basic writer to choose overly simplistic materials. Material should be equal to that found in regular college classes. Integrating reading and writing courses into a year-long class gives students more time to work on both and to help form a community in the classroom (e.g., Goen and Gillotte-Tropp, 96). Also, some students seem to need more time to succeed. And good readers don’t necessarily read quickly (Qualley, 102–7). Use a variety of idea-generating tools such as: K-W-L approach (Here’s what I know before reading, Here’s what I want to know, and here’s what I’ve learned from the reading). Having students “teach the text,” (Dickson, graph 17) is another common strategy used in many educational situations. Have the students gather into groups, negotiate and devise clear statements to explain what they know from the reading. Have them argue with the author. Students need to get over the idea that teachers and authors are the final authority on every matter. Students need to learn they can become part of the ongoing conversation (Bazerman) on a topic. Encourage enjoyment and confidence from the class by reading a variety of materials that can appeal to a wide audience.
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