Reading Activities

I think that Bean Ch. 8 brings up a very important point regarding the fact that freshmen really don't know how to read on the college level yet. It seems particularly important when you consider that College Composition is the class where they should learn how to do this, but so often a class that is writing based can lose focus on the fact that a class on writing should also be a class on reading as well.

One activity for this would be to actually take class time to walk students through how to do a careful reading. This could involve reading aloud an essay from the class text and stopping after each paragraph to look at what was accomplished in the paragraph, to sum it up, or to try to get a hint of where the writer is going. Teach them to write short, quick paraphrases in the margins of what the paragraph said.

I do think it could also be useful to show the students a bit of my own reading and writing process, though this could be tricky as well. The main point would be to show them that a lot of preliminary work goes into good reading, as well as good writing; to show them that the early process is rough, but should allow for a free flow of ideas. The down-side is opening up your work to your students' judgment and the possibility that they may try to use the "flaws" in your brainstorming and rough draft writing against you, or to justify why their own flaws are deserving of being looked over. Of course, the best response to that is to remind them that it is a process, which is messy at first, but that the final product of the paper itself is what is being judged.