Any Readers in Your Classes?

Remember when we set ninth grade reading level as the minimum for most of our Gen Ed courses? It has been over three years now. I would love to hear from instructors as to how that has worked out in your classes. Since most of the books we use are written at the 13.0 or 14.0 level (and some are even higher), that means students are facing text with a sophistication and vocabulary level that they may have never been exposed to before. Are they understanding what they are reading? Or are they avoiding the reading assigned?

I have been teaching the lower level reading courses ENG 083 and 083 for four years now.  During that time, I have tried Humanities theme-based readers, biographies, fiction, and actual reading textbooks. When I used the readers, many of the students could not understand the essays well enough to determine the thesis, to outline the content, and to examine the arguments. As a result, I have resorted to finding my own selection of articles and essays that I think they will be able to comprehend.

The problem with the common published reading textbooks is that they continue to review skills that the students have already grasped. For example, my students are now working with a chapter that is having them find the main idea sentence for paragraphs taken from college textbooks. How many of you as you read are tearing apart every paragraph? I certainly don't want students thinking that this is something they should be doing for every paragraph they encounter for the rest of their lives, but I do want them to be able to grasp the thesis point of what they are reading and find the main supporting points, whether they are reading a sociology textbook or a newspaper editorial.  

Here is the dilemma. The students in my classes have the basics down. They can read sentences and paragraphs. They can sound out words, and they know how to use dictionaries (not that they are using them frequently). However, they do not know how to wrestle with new information, with arguments, both well-founded and fallacious, and with author tone and purpose. They also do not know how to adapt their reading skills for various disciplines. Reading a chemistry textbook requires a different style of reading than reading a history book which should be read differently than a novel. Most of our students do not have that level of sophistication. For them, reading is more passive than active, eyes moving across the page in the correct direction. Comprehension requires active reading, engaged with and questioning new information. Critical thinking needs be practiced as they adapt to new reading situations. This is not covered well in most reading textbooks.

The College Reading and Learning Association just published a white paper that speaks to this very issue:

An important aspect of increasing the effectiveness of developmental reading is tied to pedagogical choices. It has been estimated that as much as 85% of college learning is dependent upon active, careful reading (Simpson & Nist, 2000). The average reading load for college students is between 150-200 pages a week (Burrell, Tao, Simpson, & Mendez-Berrueta, 1996). However, much of the instruction in developmental reading courses has traditionally centered on a transmission model of teaching isolated reading skills, such as selecting main idea, identifying fact and opinion statements, and other sub-skills (Armstrong & Newman, 2011; Maxwell, 1997), despite calls for a more strategic or process-based approach (Simpson, Stahl, & Francis, 2004). Research results on skills-based instruction show little to no improvement on students’ reading ability upon completion of these remedial courses (Merisotis & Phipps, 2000). Such an approach cannot adequately prepare students because the tasks of college vary widely across disciplines and purposes and students are expected to engage and interpret text of increasing difficulty (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006; Eckert, 2011). (6-7)

After reading this paper, I was reaffirmed regarding what I was intuiting about the typical developmental reading textbooks. The approach to skills is inefficient, unsuccessful in the long run, and actually aimed the wrong direction. I and my students get bored quickly with the mundane tasks and assignments. Thus, I am ready once again to scrap the textbook for a more holistic approach to reading instruction. to me, the main goal of instruction should be to build up the reading fluency of our students. The kind of reading sophistication that our students need takes time and immersion in written text.

Notice that the quote above says the "average reading load for college students is 150-200 pages a week." Many of the students enrolling in our college for the first time have not read that many pages in a year, much less "turned a page" (I would include all of the good reading to be found in the Internet) during the summer prior to classes. I would propose that this is not the fault of their prior education, but a reflection of our culture: our society does not encourage reading as a valuable activity. Our students have so many more "interesting" options that are far more social in nature as seen in one of my favorites by Scott and Borgman:



I will be going back to working on building that reading fluency, using the most interesting texts that I can find that will promote active reading and enjoyment. If I can get them hooked on the value (... and dare I say "joy") of reading, then I will have achieved my personal goal for the classes.

Having said all of this, I would encourage you to consider how you might utilize those first few reading assignments each semester to train your students how to read in your discipline. How does a biologist read scientific texts? How does a historian read a primary document? How does a sociologist read a research study? Trust me, our students don't know, and one semester in a reading class will not prepare them for every field of study.

If you have a typical 3-5 page reading, be it an essay or a chapter in a book, that you assign to your students,  I would love to have a copy to use in my classes. In the meantime, I am going to look for books and ebooks, articles and essays, that will help develop reading fluency.

The Value of Community College

Do you remember when community colleges used to be called junior colleges? I attended West Valley Junior College in Saratoga, California.  As a student there, I surmised that the "junior" designation meant that indeed I was not attending a real college. Even so,  I chose to attend this junior college because I wasn't ready to leave home and because my parents promised me much-needed braces if I would attend WVJC. Such a deal!

The last time I requested a transcript, it came from West Valley Community College. This "new" moniker is clearly designed to reflect a different status and a different role for two-year colleges. No longer was this to be seen as a college in training, subservient to the four-year college. Community colleges now see themselves not only as serving students, but also serving their communities. This name change broadened the scope and mission beyond transferring students on to universities.

However, from my teaching experience, I feel this moniker shift also reflected a transformation in our approach to education. When I attended junior college, I did not get involved in many campus activities. Most of my classes, though small, were still based upon the lecture delivery. I could easily slip in and out of classes and on and off campus without getting to know any of my classmates. Not once did I go to an instructor's office or visit with an advisor.

Now we actively promote community on campus. We want our students to get to know each other and us and to get involved on campus because we know this contributes to student success. On any given day, we can see students roaming through our office halls, gathering at the coffee kiosk, or forming groups in the quad. In my classes, I seek to create community and encourage collaboration by using lots of small group activities. After three or four weeks, I  catch students conversing as I walk into class. In my online classes, the discussion boards force the students to interact with each other at least twice every week. As students share their thinking, they also begin to share snippets of their life experiences that contribute to their viewpoints. The conversations become rich with encouragement, challenges, and critical thinking as the students spur each other on to go deeper.

As I see it, Yavapai College is a community within a community, and our community should always be a living and thriving environment for our students.  Within the details of a busy week, I can lose sight of that vision, but it doesn't take me long to regain it as I walk from building 3 to building 19, greeting students as I go and listening to the the hum of various conversations along the way.