Keywords

Reading apprenticeship; college composition; reading across the disciplines; composition pedagogy

Abstract

The connection between reading and writing may seem obvious to college composition instructors. However, while we take pains to construct careful reading lists to prepare students to write thoughtful essays, we often struggle to motivate students to complete the readings or to see the relationship between critical reading and critical writing. The lack of critical reading skills is, sadly, widespread. According to WestEd, a national, non-profit education research organization, two-thirds of high school students in the US “are unable to read and comprehend complex academic texts, think critically about texts, synthesize info, or communicate clearly what they have learned.” This is certainly a problem for those of us working in higher education, particularly for those, like myself, working in open-admissions community or state colleges. In Florida, the passage of Senate Bill 1740 in 2014 created additional challenges for college composition instructors by limiting a college or university’s ability to require certain students to take developmental courses in writing and/or reading. During the last accreditation review at my college, Seminole State College of Florida, Reading Comprehension was identified as the focus of our five-year Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). A key component of that included training faculty across disciplines in the Reading Apprenticeship framework. I completed the training in the Fall 2015 and have been implementing Reading Apprenticeship strategies in both my ENC 1101 and 1102 courses since then. In this presentation, I’d like to share some of the reading apprenticeship strategies and assignments that I’ve found helpful in my courses.

Date Created

January 2017

https://works.bepress.com/rachel-edford/16/download/

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