Reading Mairolina Salvatori’s piece about the interconnectedness of reading and writing gave me a better understanding of why and how students can improve their writing through reading. I think I had a vague idea of the benefits of analyzing the argument of another text could help students make arguments of their own. It seemed to me that written texts could act as models for students to study and imitate in their papers.
And, to a certain extent, this is what Salvatori has in mind—but she certainly has a much more sophisticated idea of the role reading should play in learning to write. I appreciate her idea of readers as the “interlocutors” of texts. If students learned to play this role as they read, then they might change their writing, as Salvatori suggests, allowing their readers to be interlocutors as well.
My biggest question for Salvatori is what written texts should be taught? She seems to privilege literary texts, which is certainly music our ears. Finally! Students in all disciplines have a practical use for the English department—the best way to learn to write is to learn to read literature. I wonder whether students can get the same benefits from learning to read a newspaper editorial, a piece of graffiti, “The Declaration of Independence,” or a chemistry textbook?
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3 comments:
Andrew,
I also wondered about what readings lead to what types of writing. Does it have to be literature that the students are reading? And let's define "literature" while we're here. I initially chuckled at the idea of a close-reading of a chemistry text, but that's probably because that was my worst subject and I don't want to admit that just because I don't know how to "analyze" it, clearly nobody else should attempt to do so.
Actually reading a chemistry text might be interesting- who knows what assumptions lie unexamined under all that chemical residue? One of my papers involves a critical reading of a passage from a history textbook. While chemistry will have less room for interpretation, who knows? Might be fun.
You know, my College Teaching class last night involved reading through an organic chemistry textbook. The assignment was to find an active learning activity for students in organic chemistry. It was really interesting, particularly since my group consisted of me (duh), another English student and a philosophy major.
Anyway, I do think that students can learn as much from a piece of graffiti as from a chemistry textbook or a Henry James novel if they approach each as a text in which close reading is necessary for understanding. Unfortunately, I think that we have to do more to explain that the former two are worth looking at closely as well as the Henry James novel. Perhaps it would be a good exercise for students to go through a chemistry book and find the author's argument and underlying assumptions. Fun stuff.
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