Comprehensive Guide to College Reading and Academic Conversations
Academic Reading as a Conversation
Analogy of Joining an Ongoing Group Conversation:
Ineffective Social Approach: Walking up to a group of strangers quietly chatting at a library table on the first day of college and announcing exactly what you are thinking at that moment to the group.
Outcome: The group will likely stop talking, look at you, laugh, and slowly move away.
Effective Social Approach: Quietly joining the group, listening for a few minutes to figure out the topic being discussed and understand the group members' different perspectives, and subsequently adding your own voice to the conversation.
Application to Academic Reading: Approaching reading in college courses functions in the exact same manner as joining an unfamiliar group conversation. Success requires listening to the ongoing discussion before contributing.
Conceptualizing Reading and Writing as Conversation:
Successful college reading requires moving beyond simply understanding what an author is trying to say to think about the broader conversation in which the author is participating.
Key Questions to Consider When Analyzing Academic Conversations:
Intertextual Context: Who else has written about this topic, and who are they?
Perspective and Argument: What is their perspective or argument on this topic?
Evidence: What type of evidence do they use to support their point of view?
Critical Reading and Academic Expectations
Definition and Impact of Critical Reading:
Verbatim Definition: Critical reading is moving beyond just understanding the author's meaning of a text to consider the choices the author makes to communicate their message.
Academic and Professional Benefits:
Improves comprehension of college-level texts.
Improves personal writing skills by learning about the choices other writers make to communicate their ideas.
Establishes a solid foundation for success academically and professionally by honing writing, reading, and critical thinking skills.
College English Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs):
College English programs define explicit reading competencies necessary for understanding assignments, writing papers, and participating in class discussions:
Identify major and minor claims in a text.
Identify and evaluate evidence supporting major and minor claims in a text.
Construct meaningful and coherent written responses to others' contributions to ongoing conversations about important topics/issues.
Analyze a text to identify its meaning, evaluate its composition, and/or determine its value.
Characteristics of the Prescribed Academic Reading Approach:
Driven continuously by questions.
Sensitive to authors' meaning, credibility, and relevance.
Rejects taking sources' perspectives for granted, actively evaluating the reliability of their claims.
Shift in Academic Expectations from High School to College:
College changes academic expectations in both the quantity and quality of work.
Requirements extend beyond understanding course material and summarizing it on an exam.
Students are expected to engage seriously with new ideas by:
Reflecting on them
Analyzing them
Critiquing them
Making connections
Drawing conclusions
Finding new ways of thinking about them
Educational Metaphor: Moving into deeper waters where learning how to read and write strategically and critically serves as the means to swim.
Comparative Analysis: High School Reading vs. College Reading
Primary Types of Text:
High School: Textbook, literature.
College: Textbook, literature, persuasive analysis, research, multimedia sources, self-selected material.
Student Expectations:
High School: Read to find the main idea, share opinions, and make personal connections.
College: Read to form new conclusions about the author or text, generate examples that support or refute a text, compare and contrast texts, and use texts to develop questions for further inquiry.
Student Goals:
High School: Understand text and share reactions to the text, be able to answer questions posed by the teacher, and ask questions to clarify understanding.
College: Analyze the text and synthesize to enter academic conversations on a topic, be able to ask questions, and share insights with peers and professors in order to further the conversation.
Teacher and Professor Expectations:
High School Teachers: Complete reading/assignment, answer who, what, when, where, and how questions, and share connections to the text.
College Professors: Develop thoughtful reactions to assignments, enter into a conversation on the topics, focus on why questions, and share questions and answers about a topic.
Teacher and Professor Goals:
High School Teachers: Check student understanding of the material through assignments (tests, quizzes, papers, etc.).
College Professors: To guide and respond to student's analysis and synthesis of information; comprehension is assumed.
Handling Academic Difficulties (If Problems Arise):
High School: Teachers may go out of their way to help students who are performing poorly on exams, missing classes, not turning in assignments, or struggling with the course; students are often given "second chances" to complete and submit assignments.
College: Professors may notice students performing poorly, but often expect students to be proactive and take steps to help themselves (i.e., attending office hours, emailing professors, etc.); "second chances" are less common.
Adapting Reading Style and Defining Academic Texts
Adapting Reading Style to Text Type:
How you read in college will differ depending on the type of text you are reading.
Academic Definition of a "Text":
Dictionary Definition: Merriam-Webster defines a text as "the main body of printed or written matter."
Expanded Academic Understanding: A "text" in academic contexts is not always a piece of writing, expanding beyond traditional print materials.