Notes on The Transition to College Reading

Katz reports that many new high school graduates lack close reading skills: they rely on generic concepts and historical knowledge, read texts to confirm their own views, and struggle with the actual language and specific details on the page. This is a broad cultural problem, not just a literary one, reflected in how reading is treated in English departments.

The problem has two parts: (i) failure to focus sharply on language, and (ii) failure to imagine the text’s author as a distinct other with different intentions.
Irony: Close reading has roots in the New Critics’ focus on language, yet students often read as if a text belongs to them. Reading should be about seeing the author’s otherness before seeing the text as one’s own.
The maxim that the author must “live before the author can die” calls educators to bring the author to life in the classroom.
Post-9/11 context highlights a broader cultural difficulty imagining others; this must be addressed in schooling, not dismissed as a private issue of interpretation.

The division of English into writing and literature obscures reading; reading is undervalued when literature is defined as aesthetically oriented texts only.
The old rhetoric of reading as aiming to convey the writer’s thought/feeling supports elocution and close attention to language; we should revive and adapt that impulse.
We should include texts that require readers to engage with opposing views and conflicting positions, not just texts we agree with.

Teach the conflicts: include texts that express positions students may reject or find troubling, and teach how to read them critically.
A good citizen must be able to imagine others’ thoughts and feelings; rhetoric is a civic skill as well as a linguistic one.
Move toward broader definitions of literature that include persuasive, argumentative, and media texts (advertising, speeches, debates).
Include critical writing as a visible component of reading instruction to help students situate their readings in relation to critics’ interpretations.

Use criticism to expose difference and situate readers’ own interpretations; criticism should be accessible and dialogic, not hierarchical.
Embrace newer technologies: the Web hosts ongoing, evidence-based debates that mirror real-world reading/writing; connect classroom work to online arguments and sources.
Examples: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s political poems, Tate’s critique in traditional scholarship, and other texts that provoke argument and analysis.
Web-based debates can model persuasive/expository writing, evidence use, and the consideration of opposing viewpoints.

Include dramatic/recitation-based activities to surface language, tone, and stance; oral interpretation makes language attention explicit.
Use texts that conflict with students’ positions to foster empathy and critical reading; bring criticism “back to earth” so every student can become a critical reader.
Redefine the priority from simply covering a canon to developing readers who grasp others’ thoughts and feelings and can evaluate them.
Connect reading/writing instruction to real-world contexts (digital media, public discourse) to support participatory democracy.

English teachers should help students imagine the other, read for authorial intention, and locate the author’s voice before contesting or adopting it.
The discipline should treat reading as a fundamental civic and linguistic skill, not a peripheral activity attached to a narrow notion of literature.
The goal is to organize curricula that cultivate close attention to language, an ability to read across genres, and the capacity to engage with competing viewpoints.