Beyond and Behind Information:
Helping Students Read Academic Texts
New York City School Library System Fall Conference
November 8, 2011
Meghann Walk
Bard High School Early College
The Haitian Revolution: Two Texts
• Encyclopedia Britannica’s “The Haitian
Revolution”
• Robin Blackburn’s “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age
of the Democratic Revolution.” William and
Mary Quarterly. 63(4), October 2006: 643-674
Helping Students Read Academic Texts
• What problems might students have reading
Blackburn’s historical essay?
• What activities might help them?
• How did you read this text?
Literacy: Not-so-basic
Student difficulties can stem from:
• Misunderstanding of the reading process
• Failure to adjust reading strategies for different purposes
• Difficulty in perceiving the structure of an argument as they read
• Difficulty in assimilating the unfamiliar
• Difficulty in appreciating a text's rhetorical context
• Difficulty seeing themselves in conversation with the author
• Lack of “cultural literacy” assumed by the text's author
• Inadequate vocabulary
• Difficulty in tracking complex syntax
• Difficulty in adjusting reading strategies to the varieties of academic
discourse
John C. Bean. “Helping Students Read Difficult Texts.” Chapter 8 of Engaging Ideas: The Professors'
Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. P.133-148.
Academic Scholarship:
Behind and Beyond “Information”
• Encyclopedias and textbooks: Surveys of the
field (in student terms: a report); in
Encyclopedia Britannica's case, written for the
general public
• Academic essays as argument (in student
terms: analysis); in Blackburn’s case, written
for scholars of early American history
Helping Students Read
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Explain to students how your own reading process varies with your purpose
Show students your own note-taking and responding process when you read
Help students get the dictionary habit
Teach students how to write “What it says” and “What it does” statements
Make students responsible for texts not covered in class
Develop ways to awaken student interest in upcoming readings
Show that all texts reflect the author's frame of reference and thus are subject to
interrogation and analysis
Show students the importance of knowing cultural codes for comprehending a text
Create “reading guides” for particularly difficult texts or for texts with unfamiliar
cultural codes
Help students see that all texts are trying to change their view of something
Teach students to play the “believing and doubting game”
John C. Bean. “Helping Students Read Difficult Texts.” Chapter 8 of Engaging Ideas:
The Professors' Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in
the Classroom. p.133-148.
Interactive Reading
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Marginal notes approach
Focused reading notes
Reading logs
Summary/Response notebooks
Responses to reading guides or guided-journal questions keyed to
readings
Imagined interviews with the author
Summary writing
Multiple-choice quiz questions developed by students
Writing “translations”
John C. Bean. “Helping Students Read Difficult Texts.” Chapter 8 of Engaging Ideas: The
Professors' Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the
Classroom. p. 133-148.
The Scholar as Inquirer
• Librarians (and hopefully many students) are familiar
with inquiry-based learning
• Author-scholars as students: re-constructing their
process of inquiry through de-constructing their use
of sources
Sources:
Essential versus Functional Understandings
• Primary, Secondary, Tertiary?
Or…
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Background
Exhibit/Example
Argument/Assertion
Method
Joseph Bizup, “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review 27(1), 2008:
72-86.
What does this have to do with librarians?
• Meaningful access
• Inquiry learning
• Information literacy