Brittanie's Stage II Draft

College reading? :D

Here's an example of a Stage II draft! Brittanie was kind enough to let me post this on the blog for you all to see. Just like last time, you're welcome to leave PQP style feedback for extra credit.

College Reading

What is college reading?  I believe college reading is a bit more complex than our normal common sense way of reading.  It involves more research and peer discussion rather than just reading to understand.  It allows us as students to absorb what the author’s purpose was and helps us to relate to the topic and come up with our own ideas.  In college reading, I would recommend that the best strategies to use would be the “rhetorical strategies” – Flower mentions in her article. She states that we must relate to the text, ask questions about the authors purpose and give our own opinion, this will make college readings a bit more easier.

My ideas of college reading have been formed by my recent first time college English class.  In this class we are assigned to read several articles on different studies of what good writing and reading are.  One of the articles that really helped to introduce me to good college reading strategies was the article named “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning” by Linda Flower.  It was an article about a study done on entering freshmen and graduate students and their strategies on understanding a college level text.  It showed that the entering freshmen that used the common strategies that were taught in High school could not understand the college level text. On the other hand, the grad student that was a more experienced reader used the rhetorical reading strategies and had no problem understanding what the author’s purpose of writing the text was, asking his own questions, or giving his own theory.

Many of the people I associate with believe that college reading is too hard and complicated to understand.  They believe you must be “really smart” to be able to understand what the text is saying.  That was the exact same perception I had about college reading also.  In the beginning of this college freshman year, one of my very first assignments was to read a college level book and write my thoughts about the authors purpose.  When I opened the book, I could not understand a single word!  I had no clue what I was reading.  I tried so many of the strategies that I was taught in high school, I tried to understand the text by writing a summary of every paragraph, highlighting important details and words… but nothing seemed to work!  What I am trying to say is what us as entering college freshmen don’t understand about college reading is that it is not just about reading to understand, or summarizing- in order to be at a college reading level we must form our own theory of the authors purpose and relate our own expierences with it.  We must think outside the box when reading a college level text, and not just focus on the meaning or summary of the text.  I believe we can change the students perspective of college reading by introducing them to rhetorical reading strategies, having them practice those strategies over and over again, read college level text often, and showing them that college reading is really not that bad.