Approaches to Critical Reading in the Composition Classroom
by Maureen Fitzpatrick
by Maureen Fitzpatrick
According to the 2016 National Assessment of Educational Progress Report published by the Department of Education, only 37% of high school seniors are prepared for college-level reading. However, while that leaves about 60% of our students unprepared for college reading, only about 10% are required to enroll in the developmental reading courses JCCC offers. As a result, many, if not most, composition students will benefit from direct or indirect instruction on how they should engage with academic texts.
The popular assumption is that we finish learning to read when we are very young, but the truth is that most of us simply stop receiving formal training in this subject around middle school, even though we don’t finish developing as complete readers until years later. People (particularly students) often think of reading as a passive activity, but it is actually a dynamic, complex, vigorous, and multi-faceted act. While reading, the mind absorbs, predicts, calculates, relates, connects, contemplates, revises, and reflects on the new ideas encountered in texts, relating them to what they already know. Although the body often looks at rest, the act of reading itself is far from passive. As we read, our mind does not simply download and store information like a computer; instead, it looks forward, speculating about what will come next based on the reader’s previous experiences with life and how the world operates. Consequently, when a text does not follow the patterns or stories we already know, it challenges the reader and demands more engaged attention and a different strategy for reading. Academic papers are challenging because they fall into a different genre of writing.
Most college students arrive in our classes with little experience in reading non-narrative texts or scholarly writings so that—when confronted with an academic essay or an economics textbook—the techniques they do possess often fail them miserably. What they need, however, is not a refresher in reading basics but new techniques to help them through the transition to reading academic prose and, subsequently, to writing it.
Research at all levels of schooling demonstrates that one of the best ways to improve students’ writing abilities is to elevate their reading level, so in order to cultivate students who do sophisticated things with language, we must nurture students to help them recognize, appreciate, and comprehend what is going on when complicated and useful things have been done with language in the materials they read.
Fortunately, many first-year composition textbooks have begun including chapters on critical reading. Furthermore, a variety of writing assignments can enhance students’ critical reading skills in a composition class by focusing their attention on different aspects of the text or purposes for reading the text in the first place.
Below are some suggestions to help students read more effectively and to help instructors incorporate critical reading into writing assignments.
Focus student attention on the meta-cognitive level and the physical act of reading. Ask students to record the physical components of their reading habits—their reading speed, how much light or quiet they require to read comfortably, how long can they read before they lose the ability to concentrate, how can they make themselves refocus. If students don’t know these things about their reading, they cannot create their best reading environment.
Hold students accountable for readings in a variety of ways.
Encourage students to read for comprehension. Basic comprehension can be demonstrated by having students write summaries of a text, answer questions about what was most and least familiar in the passage they read.
Encourage students to read for stylistics. Bring your students’ attention to the stylistic elements in an essay by having them do one of a variety of activities prior to class: students might list what they did or did not like about the author’s voice, imitate the style and structure of a specific text, select and concretely praise (or criticize) sentences they thought particularly effective or ineffective, select metaphors for explication or revision, or compose a different introduction for the essay to make it appropriate for a different audience or rhetorical purpose.
Encourage students to read for rhetorical elements. With a little modeled practice and some well-designed questions, students can learn to analyze many of the rhetorical basics in the essays they read. Rather than stopping at summarizing, students can be encouraged to describe the ideal audience for a text, explicate what the writer is attempting to do in a particular passage of writing, identify various strategies in a sample text’s organization, tone, or the selection and integration of the supporting materials cited.
Teach students to critically evaluate each source to ensure it meets rigorous academic standards. Today, many people have, intentionally or inadvertently, secured themselves in a bubble by surrounding themselves with media that confirm their biases and by surrounding themselves with voices that share their common world view. Accordingly, it can be more challenging for students to critically evaluate sources—particularly material from the Wild West of the Internet. For many students, a good source is one that says what they want it to say, not one where the author has qualifications or is even known. Towards that end, most colleges and libraries teach students to apply the CRAAP test when evaluating sources. With the CRAAP test, students examine each potential source for the answers to these questions:
Currency: When was the paper, website, or article published? Is it up to date?
Relevance: How does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
Authority: Who authored the website, paper or article? Why should I trust him or her (or them or it)?
Accuracy: Where does the information come from? Is it supported by evidence?
Purpose: Is the purpose of the text to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade?
The JCCC library tutorials page (http://jccc.libguides.com/c.php?g=962375) has more information on evaluating sources as well as resources explaining how to use an academic library).
Digital media is very much a part of personal, professional, and academic communications. For our students to be functionally literate in the 21st century, educators must teach not only the skills students require as critical digital media consumers, but also the skills students require to be mindful content curators as well as content creators.
In 2019, NCTE revised its Definition of Literacy in the Digital Age (http://www2.ncte.org/statement/nctes-definition-literacy-digital-age/print/). The statement (printed below with few changes) argues that successful participants in a global society must be able to perform key tasks as consumers, curators, and creators of new media. The skills associated with said tasks are not developed by students (or any person) in the order listed, nor do these skills operate in a set sequence; rather, students will learn more about being a responsible consumer as they curate and create. These tasks and accompanying skills include:
As Consumers
Analyze and evaluate the multimedia sources that they consume
Consider the author, purpose, and design of information they consume online
Review information shared online with a perspective of healthy skepticism
Solve real problems and share results with real audiences
Search and synthesize online texts to resolve inquiry-based questions
As Curators
Consciously make connections between their work and that of the greater community
Evaluate the content they find online before sharing with others
Apply ethical practices when using media
Evaluate content and develop their own expertise on a topic
Collect, aggregate, and share content to develop their voice/identity/expertise on a topic
As Creators
Use tools to communicate original perspectives and to make new thinking visible
Communicate information and ideas in a variety of forms and for various purposes
Make creative decisions with intention, developing and using skills associated with modality
Articulate thoughts and ideas so that others can understand and act on them
Evaluate multimedia sources for the effects of visuals, sounds, hyperlinks, and other features on the text’s meaning or emotional impact
Make informed decisions about their own design choices as an element of the whole composition
Share and publish their work in a variety of ways with a consideration of the intended audience
Respond constructively to published work and to responses to their own work
Publish in ways that meet the needs of a specific authentic audience
Composing in digital media requires the same skills and processes as writing in traditional academic genres; although no course in the composition sequence should not fail to contain the established genre of academic essay, the incorporation of digital genres can develop the student’s understanding of audience, purpose, and organization in ways that complement traditional instruction.