Reading Academic Texts (RATs!):
A Course Proposal
Tracy Ann Robinson
Oregon State University
March 2002
Preface
Last winter’s course in “The Teaching of Reading” pushed my thinking in numerous directions,
as indicated by the many compelling ideas I would have liked to explore in my final paper for the
course, including (among others) the role of the emotions in reading; differences in reader
response to works by same-gender or cross-gender authors; uses of reading–writing connections
in teaching Shakespeare; reading as a learning-style issue; and new applications for readerresponse theory. Over time, however, the issue that has emerged as most compelling and critical,
not just to me as both student and teacher but as an ongoing concern/frustration/puzzle-to-besolved for students and instructors across this university (and presumably many other universities
as well) is the widespread though largely unaddressed difficulties college students have with
reading academic texts.
As a teacher in OSU’s Academic Success program last year, I was startled to encounter the firm
belief, on many students’ parts, that they simply “couldn’t read” the assigned texts in courses
across the curriculum. I was also concerned by the fact (according to student reports) that few
instructors seemed to be offering any kind of coaching in reading the texts they assigned.
As I would discover subsequently, such a sense of utter estrangement from academic texts is not
confined to students enroll in study-skills courses. In a Shakespeare survey course whose
enrollment drew from many different majors, the majority of students believed that their skills in
academic reading were substandard. More importantly, they perceived this deficiency as
something they had somehow to deal with on their own; for again (according to their own
reports), few of their instructors provided any guidance in this area.
Students’ difficulty with academic reading is not a new issue—reading academic discourse is no
cake walk for any of us. But as an obstacle to effecting teaching, it is getting more serious, if
comments from faculty who attended last spring’s Literacy Roundtable serve as any indication.
Apparently, many faculty members now take it as a given that many of their students do little, if
any, of the required readings. Consequently, these instructors are seriously questioning whether
they should continue to include textbook reading assignments in their syllabi.
Still, for all the frustration vented in that round-table discussion, few participating faculty
members reported providing any coaching in the kinds of reading they assign. Traditionally,
faculty don’t see this as their responsibility. Students are “supposed to know” how to read when
they enter the university, and struggling through reading assignments is part of the experience of
being a student. Course instructors have little time enough to teach the material; teaching reading
on top of that is not their job.
RATs course proposal—p. 1
While I disagree with this perspective, and will argue in this paper that faculty do need to
incorporate the teaching of the readings they assign into their course design, I also see pragmatic
reasons for creating a course specifically devoted to the teaching of reading academic texts.
Thus, what I have developed in the attached paper is the proposal for such a course.
RATs course proposal—p. 2
Reading Academic Texts (RATs!):
A Course Proposal
The trouble with educated Americans is that they […] don’t seem to realize that it’s
almost as hard to read a book properly as it is to write one, that reading is a talent too.’
Broyard)
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views
which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke,
and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. (Emerson
86)
A piece of data, of information, only becomes a piece of knowledge when it can be
understood as the answer to a question. (Birkerts 25)
A reader comprehends not just by being familiar with the vocabulary but also by
relating the content to things that she or he already knows and understands.
(Kennedy and Smith 12)
[S]uccessful readers and writers actively seek out the margins and aggressively poise
themselves in a hesitant and tenuous relationship to the language and methods of the
university. (Bartholomae and Petrosky 41)
Any successful academic text, or any genuine interpretation of one, is a new creation
out of conventional forms and meanings. It is, therefore, never wholly predictable or
repeatable or capable of being rehearsed. (Wall 106)
This is one of the lessons a reader must learn: that reading, like writing, begins in
confusion, anxiety and uncertainty; that it is driven by chance and intuition as well as by
deliberate strategy or conscious intent; that certainty and authority are postures,
features of performance that are achieved through an act of writing, not qualities of
vision that precede such a performance. (Bartholomae and Petrosky 21)
The understanding of a text has not begun at all as long as the text remains mute. But
a text can begin to speak. [. . .] When it does begin to speak, however, it does not
simply speak its word, always the same, in lifeless rigidity, but gives ever new
answers to the person who questions it and poses ever new questions to him who
answers it. To understand a text is to come to understand oneself in a kind of
dialogue. This contention is confirmed by the fact that the concrete dealing with a
text yields understanding only when what is said in the text begins to find expression
in the interpreter'’ own language. Interpretation belongs to the essential unity of
understanding. One must take up into himself what is said to him in such fashion that
it speaks and finds an answer in the words of his own language. (Hans-Georg
Gadaman, Philosophical Hermenuitics 57, quoted in Salvatori 137)
We read well and with pleasure that which we already know how to read. (A. Kolodny,
quoted by Heidi Brayman Hackel, September 2001)
RATs course proposal—p. 3
Introduction
In recent years, universities across the U.S. have acknowledged the importance of helping
students to cultivate their academic writing skills in order both to promote a more productive
academic experience for their students and to enhance their students’ future career successes.
With the establishment of the Writing Intensive Curriculum (WIC) program and Bac Core WIC
course requirement, OSU joins those institutions who are demonstrating a commitment to this
effort to develop their students’ writing skills.
The assumption has long been that writing instruction follows reading proficiency, but this is not
always the reality. Thus, while I number myself among those who support the work of enhancing
students’ academic writing skills at the college level, I would also argue that equally (or possibly
even more) important to students’ success in college and beyond is their ability to read academic
discourse confidently and productively. What I will be proposing in this paper, therefore, is a
new undergraduate course at OSU entitled “Reading Academic Texts” whose focus is on
developing critical reading and thinking skills and appropriate methodologies for navigating
successfully through the variety of scholarly discourses with which they will come into contact
during their college experience.
While such a course could logically be presented as a sort of complementary counterpart to
Writing 121 (the first-year writing requirement taught through the English department), I believe
it would be wiser not to affiliate such a course exclusively either with an individual department
or with one’s first year at college. While I think that the idea of making this a required first-year
course makes a lot of sense, I would want to frame the course as inter-disciplinary and
appropriate for all students regardless of their major, academic standing, or chronological point
in their course of university study. Thus, the course that I am envisioning is a 3-credit
Tuesday/Thursday class, offered as either an ALS program or Liberal Studies course. It will
work best, I believe, if capped at 25 and graded on a Pass/No Pass basis.
Course Rationale
Last spring, a group of faculty members from across the disciplines attended a “Literacy
Roundtable” discussion put together by Drs. Anita Helle and Heidi Brayman Hackel of the
English department. Much of the roundtable conversation centered on participating faculty
members’ concerns over the fact that a majority of their students do not complete their course
reading assignments and the related question of whether it even makes sense these days to
incorporate reading assignments into course designs. An odd mixture of frustration, pessimism,
and resignation pervaded the discussion, which seemed, at that point, to serve more as an
occasion for venting than a problem-solving opportunity.
It’s not just OSU’s faculty, but the institution’s students as well, who are identifying academic
reading as an issue on this campus. One of the major concerns that surfaced in my ALS 199
(“Academic Success”) classes last year was the difficulty many students were having not just in
RATs course proposal—p. 4
comprehending their assigned readings but, even more fundamentally problematic, with
completing those readings. In many cases, this difficulty was at least partly related to poor time
management skills and inappropriate choice of reading times and locations, but even more
significantly it evolved (in most cases) from an insufficient repertoire of appropriate reading
strategies, which gave rise to a defeatist attitude about reading. Appendix A comprises a
response letter that I wrote to my students after reading their accounts of their experiences as
academic readers.
While we might “expect” at-risk students (who comprise the majority of ALS 199 enrollment) to
have trouble with reading, the problem seems to be more widespread than that. And from many
students’ perspective, instructor support for dealing with that problem is blatantly missing. Last
fall, students in Dr. Heidi Brayman Hackel’s 200-level Shakespeare survey class—a class in
which she and I explicitly focused on reading and comprehension strategies—completed a twopage reading questionnaire on their experience at OSU as readers of academic texts. The
questionnaire (see Appendix B) included a series of questions about the students’ experience as
readers across the curriculum. The final question in that series was “In your recollection, did the
instructor [in whichever course respondents identified as having encompassed the most difficult
reading material.] offer any support/coaching in HOW to read the text? What tips did she/he
provide?”
Of the 45 students who completed the questionnaire, 41 answered this question. Of these 41
students, 29 students—collectively whose most difficult reading came from a broad range of
classes (and levels) across the disciplines—answered with an unqualified No. Of the remaining
12 respondents who answered with a “Yes,” five were referring in this answer to our
Shakespeare class. Thus, excluding this class, the ratio of students who reported having received
some kind of coaching in the class in which they experienced their hardest reading, as compared
to those who reported no offerings of assistance/guidance, is an unimpressive 1:4.
Clearly this questionnaire reached a tiny sampling of students, and citing it as evidence from
which to draw conclusions for a university whose student population numbers in the ten
thousands may seem foolish. Nonetheless, because the respondents were enrolled in a Bac Core
class taken by students from a cross section of majors and comprising a broad band of the GPA
spectrum, the survey responses can be seen as representative of the OSU undergraduate
population and should be taken seriously. These responses indicate a lack of focus on instruction
in the reading of course texts, which in turn reveals a possible missing link in students’
attainment of the degree of academic success of which they are potentially capable. Such
success might indeed be more available to them if such “coaching practices” were in place.
Benefits to OSU
Founded on students’ assessments of their learning styles, their reading histories, and their
academic and life goals, this course on Reading Academic Texts not only provides an explicit
opportunity for students to practice/strengthen skills in reading scholarly discourse but also,
more broadly, enhances these students’ development and personal empowerment as human
beings. Thus, the course will strengthen confidence, ability, and motivation not just for academic
reading per se but also for the students’ broader commitment to succeed at the university.
Presumably, this would benefit OSU in measurable ways: it would both contribute to greater
retention rates and increase student success rates (and therefore reported satisfaction levels).
RATs course proposal—p. 5
Adjunct Activities
Efforts to reduce “academic text illiteracy” at OSU through the offering of a course in academic
reading would clearly be supported by parallel efforts to develop greater faculty awareness that
coaching in disciplinary reading skills can also become an integral component of the work (and
responsibility) of teaching course content. Very few students come into the university knowing
how to do this kind of reading; and thus, as much as we may wish that such were not the case,
part of our job as teachers at OSU is to help our students develop this skill. To acknowledge and
address this need in our teaching is something we owe not just to them but also to ourselves. In
doing so, everyone wins: students, instructors, the university, and society itself. Various adjunct
efforts could include providing information to faculty about participating students’ experiences
in and responses to the course; student/faculty roundtable discussions on reading at the
university; and faculty workshops that address the inclusion of reading pedagogy in courses
across the disciplines.
Finally, I want to emphasize that what I am proposing is not a remedial course in reading, if by
“remediating” we mean bolstering a skill that that most entering students have and a few do not.
Rather, I would characterize this as a “remedying” course—for what it does is fill a largely
unacknowledged but deeply problematic gap in the university curriculum. Most OSU students
have never been taught the skill of academic reading, nor are they receiving instruction in this
skill while they are here. But without such instruction, how can students possibly get the most
value out of the four—or six, or ten—years they spend at this institution? And likewise, in the
absence of such skill-building, how can instructors possibly attain the degree of satisfaction and
fulfillment in their teaching that we all hope for?
RATs course proposal—p. 6
Reading Academic Texts (RATs!):
A Course Proposal
Course summary
Course Outcomes
Students who take this class will:
 Develop a greater awareness of themselves as readers of academic texts
 Expand their repertoires of academic reading strategies
 Increase their levels of comprehension of academic texts across the disciplines
 Increase their familiarity with the university community and its student support systems
and become more skilled both at recognizing what kinds of academic/emotional support
they may need to be successful in a given course and knowing how, where, and from
whom to obtain that support.
Required Texts
Students’ other course texts for the term
Set of critical reading/thinking articles (or single textbook?)
Reading packet of textbook chapters/articles/essays from across the disciplines, compiled with
input from faculty participating in the course.
Outside Writing Assignments
 Reading autobiography (500 words, due week 1)
 Learning styles analysis (500 word, due week 2)
 Journaling assignments (250 words ea, due weeks 2—4)
 Collaborative assignment: In teams of two, interview three faculty members in one
department on their recommended strategies for reading academic discourse in that field
and other ideas for enhancing relevant critical thinking skills; write up results. (Individual
team write-ups will then be compiled to create a reference for all class members) (1,000
words, due week 9)
 Rhetorical précis (250 words, due week 7)
 Writing assignments for weeks 7-8 (TBD)
 Analysis of on-line vs. printed text reading (500 words, due week 10)
Together, these will comprise the beginnings of a personal portfolio of resources for reading
academic texts.
In-Class Reading–Writing Connection Exercises
 Directed/undirected reader-response free-writes
 Write-and-Pass
 Oral reading/information collage
 Asking questions
 Active reading exercises—note taking, text survey, questions
 Other?
RATs course proposal—p. 7
Course Structure
This course consists of three interconnected units. In weeks 1 and 2, we will focus on the work of
getting acquainted with ourselves as readers of academic texts. This work will include writing a
reading autobiography, assessing learning style preferences in the context of self as reader, and
examining the physiological/neurological/mechanical processes of reading in the interest of
expanding students’ repertoire of decoding strategies. (i.e. speed reading techniques, taking in
information in larger chunks, etc.)
Weeks 3-5 will be devoted to the work of connecting with academic texts—stressing the
concepts of “active”, or “assertive,” reading and critical thinking and the ways in which
McCormick’s three models of reading can contribute to a fuller and richer comprehension of
academic discourse. We’ll also spend some time on reading–writing connections, and have a
look at the benefits of reading intertextually, across the disciplines.
In week 6 we will switch to a more explicit focus on reading in the disciplines at OSU. We’ll
begin this final segment with a faculty panel discussion of reading strategies across the
disciplines. During each following week, one guest speaker representing a department in the
sciences, humanities, literature, or engineering field will speak more explicitly about reading in
that field. Also, students who worked in that field for their collaborative project will present their
project results. We will work as a class on a selected reading from that field. As part of this last
unit we will also discuss (and practice) strategies for reading e-texts.
A more detailed (class-by-class) outline follows.
RATs course proposal—p. 8
Reading Academic Texts (RATs!):
A Course Proposal
UNIT 1: Getting to Know Self as Reader of Academic Texts
WEEK 1
Tuesday: Introduction, syllabus review, student introductions. (Collect student contact and
course information on note cards.) Short in-class reading and follow-up write-and-pass exercise.
Discussion of first writing assignment, due on Thursday.
Assignment for Thursday: Write a 250-500 word “reading autobiography.” Begin by describing
your experience of learning to read, what you enjoyed reading both as a child and now, and how
you characterize yourself as a reader. Then discuss specifically your history as a reader of
academic texts.
Thursday: Quote of the day:
Our students are bound by the model of reading they carry to the act of reading.
These stories of reading are what a teacher must attend to, not isolated reading
“skills.” Our students’ obsessive concern over the fact that they don’t remember
everything they read, their concern to dig out the right answers, their despair over
passages that seem difficult or ambiguous are symptoms of a misunderstanding of
the nature of texts and the nature or reading that must be overcome if students are to
begin to take chare of the roles they might play in the classroom. (Bartholomae and
Petrosky 18-19)
In this session we will discuss our personally constructed identities as readers, try to identify
personal “disconnect” points in our ventures into academic reading, and work on debunking
myths/self-talk that may interfere with our reading success. Just as the act of identifying oneself
as a particular type of student—good, bad, motivated, indifferent, successful, “a failure,” and so
on—impacts one’s educational experience, so may the act of labeling oneself as a particular type
of reader (fast, slow, capable, “bad,” etc.) predetermine the quality of one’s reading experiences.
As a group, we will compile a list of “good” reader characteristics, and examine the
ramifications of these beliefs.
Assignment due Tuesday: Complete the Optimind® On-line Learning Assessment and print out
the full report. Write a 250-500-word “journal entry” reflecting on your current reading
practices and evaluate the relationship (or lack thereof) between these practices and your
individual learning preferences—i.e. which of your practices are complementary to your
learning preferences, and which are at odds with them? What might be some appropriate
alternative approaches?
WEEK 2
RATs course proposal—p. 9
Tuesday: For today’s class, students will have completed the Optimind® learning style
assessment to identify their individual preferences.1 The way we learn clearly has a connection
with the way we need to approach reading—knowing how we learn can provide valuable and
empowering insights into how we experience and integrate the activity of reading in our lives
and, more specifically, why we have different degrees and kinds of difficulties connecting with
the content of academic texts. For example, if I am a “mover,” I will likely absorb significantly
less from a text if I am using conventional reading strategies; ie, sitting still at my desk to read,
than if I were to read standing up, or while fidgeting with something, or as I paced around the
room. If I am a “talker,” I won’t even know what I’ve absorbed from my reading until I have a
chance to talk about it with someone else or reflect on it in writing. If I am a “listener,” my
chances of absorbing the information on a page are significantly reduced in the presence of
distracting background noise. If I’m an associative learner, I may need to schedule multiple short
reading sessions rather than try to complete a reading assignment in one sitting. I will need to
relate what I’m reading to other texts and experiences. If I’m a linear reader, my understanding
of the text will be enhanced by look at how its structure moves me from point to point, from
beginning to end.
Assignment due Thurs: as you complete one of your reading assignments, “observe” yourself
and record your reading process in your journal. Note your thoughts, behaviors, and points of
engagement and disengagement with the reading.
Thursday: We will spend this session looking at the “mechanics” of reading, probably with a
guest lecturer (cognitive psychologist?). Specifically, we will look at the decoding processes that
get information from page to brain, and ways in which we can train ourselves to read more
efficiently. I also want to clarify possible misunderstandings around the correlation between
reading speed and academic success. Many students feel at a disadvantage because they think
they read “too slowly”. We will take a closer look at both the advantages and the pitfalls of being
a “fast” or a “slow” reader, and learn strategies for dealing with the pitfalls attached to each.
We’ll do various in-class exercises that demonstrate the principles being discussed.
Assignment due Tuesday: follow-up journaling/exercises TBD
UNIT II: Connecting with Academic Texts
WEEK 3
Tuesday:
1. Unit introduction—explain my sense of connection as being a horizontal, “dialogic”
process, and talk about why that may seem problematic in the university system. Follow
up on the quotes included in this proposal as epigraphs. (Some of these will also appear
on the course syllabus.)
The Optimind assessment is the one used for the two-day “Teaching the Complicated Learner” workshop held at
OSU in November 2001. See Appendix C for a description of this assessment and sample results.
1
RATs course proposal—p. 10
2. Workshop on textbook/article reading approaches—surveying, skimming, thorough
reading—and discussion of when each of these would be appropriate.
3. Introduction to “Comprehensive Reading Strategy for the Reading Process” concept as
described in Kennedy and Smith (13).
4. Discuss collaborative assignment (due Thursday of week 6), pass around sign-up sheet
for department in which students will conduct faculty interviews.
Assignment due Thursday: more practice on three reading approaches, working with students’
current texts (where appropriate) and/or readings from course packet.
Thursday: Active reading strategies, part I: Reading for Information.
We’ll look at, and get some practice with, three strategies that “promote assertive reading”
(Kennedy and Smith 14-20):
 Calling up prior knowledge/feelings about topic (follow-up freewrite, brainstorming)
 Previewing material and deriving questions (small group work)
 Annotating material and taking notes (individual/small group work)
Note: Students will continue to practice with these strategies in Unit 3
Assignment due Tuesday: practice in journaling, conducting a “conversation-in-the-margins”
WEEK 4
Tuesday: Active reading strategies, part II: Reading for Form, Organization and Features
(Kennedy and Smith 21-28)
We’ll discuss common forms of academic discourse, including response, compare/contrast,
synthesis, argument, analysis, evaluation, literature review, and research. And we’ll examine
different patterns of organization in academic texts and get some practice in identifying them.
We’ll discuss the use of citations, notes, illustrations, and supplementary information in
academic texts, and how to approach these as part of the active reading/comprehension process.
Assignment for Thursday: Exercise in identifying writing “features” that differentiate texts.
(Moves into rhetorical issues)
Thursday: Active reading strategies, part III: Reading for Rhetorical Concerns (Kennedy and
Smith 28-32)
We’ll talk about what an author’s “rhetorical concerns” means and why identifying them matters
when reading an academic text. We’ll also talk about the sometimes problematic intersection
between an author’s rhetorical goals and a reader’s concerns/motives for reading the text (this
may help clarify why it sometimes hard to “step into” various texts, and why different reading
strategies may apply in different situations).
RATs course proposal—p. 11
I’ll introduce the rhetorical précis as a way to integrate, in writing, aspects of all three active
reading approaches—as well as a great way to document our reading for later recall and
discussion. We’ll work together to develop a rhetorical précis as a group.
Assignment for Tuesday: write a rhetorical précis for one of the readings we’ve already done.
WEEK 5: Focus on Reading–Writing–Speech Connections and Intertextuality
Tuesday: In this class we’ll look at connections between reading and speaking, and ways in
which orality can assist and reinforce comprehension of written texts.
1. Connections between reading and lecture: how they work together; how to use reading to
increase lecture comprehension and lecture material to guide reading.
2. Collaborative reading: in small groups, students will focus on one section of a reading
and present information to rest of group.
3. Academic text renderings: re-presenting information as audio collage
Assignment for Thursday: TBD, but reinforcing the idea of connection between reading and
speech.
Thursday: Today we’ll look at the idea of interdisciplinary reading, of the conversations that can
emerge between and among texts. We’ll discuss the potential benefits of reading and thinking
across the disciplines. I’ll create an in-class exercise, adapted from Bob Lillie’s Intro to Geology
class activity on connecting knowledge of geological principles to future career in students’
individual majors, designed to identify connections between reading in a “foreign” field and
reading in one’s major.
Sign up for individual conferences to be held Wed-Fri of week 6.
Assignment for Tuesday: Do some research on the Internet to get to know the faculty who will be
participating in next Tuesday’s panel discussion, and develop some preliminary discussion
questions.
UNIT 3: Focus on Reading in the Disciplines at OSU
WEEK 6
Tuesday: We’ll open this unit with a panel presentation/discussion by faculty from departments
across the disciplines. I’ll ask the panel members to talk about their experience with and
impressions of students as readers; their rationales for the reading they assign; their expectations
of the way students fulfill and apply those assignments (and possible frustrations with same). I’ll
also ask the panel members to speak from their own experience as academic readers, and talk
about reading strategies they utilize when reading both inside and outside their own field.
Students will be expected to take notes during these opening remarks and then actively
participate in the question and answer/discussion session following.
RATs course proposal—p. 12
Assignment for Thursday: 250-word journal entry on panel discussion
Thursday class canceled due to individual conferences Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of
week 6
WEEKS 7 AND 8
These four classes will follow the same basic structure: A faculty presenter will conduct a
workshop on reading in her/his particular field—to work specifically with comprehension
strategies appropriate to the physical sciences, social sciences, literature, or engineering. I’ll ask
the presenter to choose a selection from which to work but will try to end up with selections from
textbooks, academic journal articles, and essay collections. Also, students who worked in that
field for their collaborative project will present their project results. This series of class sessions,
I hope, will serve both to sharpen the students’ academic reading skills and to increase their
confidence, and interest, in engaging with faculty members in scholarly conversation (and thus to
counteract hierarchical relationships). Assignments (TBD) will be designed collaboratively with
each of the four presenters, to provide follow up for each session’s focus.
WEEK 9: Reading electronic texts
Tuesday: In this class, I’ll ask one of OSU’s distance-education specialists to meet with us and
discuss strategies for reading on-line academic texts. In-class workshop activities to be arranged
with guest instructor. (For this class, it would be helpful to meet in a computer-equipped
classroom, if such exist on campus.)
Assignment due Thursday: Read Birkerts and respond reflectively to two of four reading prompts
on the essay. (approx. 400 words total)
Thursday: Class session at Valley Library with information literacy specialist—focusing on
research strategies for assignments that involve on-line searches for academic texts, and for
locating electronic texts. As well as sharpening electronic research and reading skills, this class
session will involve some “consciousness raising” about the limitations and advantages of online
research tools.
Assignment due Tuesday: work with both a hypertext document and a journal article, both online
and in hard copy. Observe and record your experiences of reading on line, and contrast these
with the experiences of reading the same text in printed form. Evaluate the benefits and costs of
on-line vs. printed text reading for you, in the context of your own learning preferences. (250500 word journal entry)
WEEK 10
I’m going to leave this week open for now, in the event that we need to reschedule one of the
week 7/8 presentations, or if the material in weeks 1-4 pushes over into week 5 (quite possible)
and I put off one or both of those classes. If we manage to stay on the schedule I’ve laid out
here, we’ll use this week to explore literacy issues, notions of what “knowledge” means and how
RATs course proposal—p. 13
academic discourse intersects with those. We’ll look at Bartholomae and Petrosky’s statement
that “When reading is defined as something other than the activity of working one’s way through
a long, complex text and imposing order and meaning on the information acquired from the text,
it is easy to see literacy as the sum of constituent skills” (12). We’ll loop around, in a sense, to
the material we covered in the beginning of the course, and, from the “other side” of the course,
re-address some of the questions that were raised early on.
Works Consulted and Cited
Bartholomae, David, and Anthony Petrosky, eds. Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts: Theory and
Method for a Reading and Writing Course. Upper Montclair, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1986.
Birkerts, Sven. “The Implications of Virtuality.” In Literacy is Not Enough: Essays on the
Importance of Reading. Ed. Brian Cox. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP and Book Trust, 1998.
18-28.
Broyard, Anatole. “The Price of Reading is Eternal Vigilance.” New York Times Book Review,
10 April 1988.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” In Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays,
Lectures, and Poems. Ed. Robert D. Richardson, Jr. NY: Bantam, 1990. 82-100
Kennedy, Mary Lynch, and Hadley M. Smith. Reading and Writing in the Academic Community.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1994.
McCormick, Kathleen. The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English. Manchester, UK:
Manchester UP, 1994.
Salvatori, Mariolina. “The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and Writing.” In Facts, Artifacts
and Counterfacts: Theory and Method for a Reading and Writing Course. David Bartholomae
and Anthony Petrosky, eds. Upper Montclair, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1986. 137-166.
Wall, Susan V. “Writing, Reading, and Authority.” In Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts: Theory
and Method for a Reading and Writing Course. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, eds.
Upper Montclair, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1986. 105-136.
RATs course proposal—p. 14