In recent years, the Writing Program has worked hard to understand how our writing sequence builds from developmental writing to research and technical writing. One of the core objectives in our writing sequence is critical and analytical reading. The following cross-course module demonstrates how critical and analytical reading can be scaffolded from course to course, deepening student learning.
Critical & Analytical Reading Course Objectives, Organized on a Continuum
ENA/G 101
Enable students to read, write, and listen critically and analytically, including identifying a text’s major assumptions and assertions and evaluating its supporting evidence. As part of this process of inquiry and problem solving, faculty will familiarize students with the concepts of audience, voice, context and purpose.
ENG 102
Reinforce critical reading and analytical skills by guiding students to identify an argument’s major assumptions and assertions and evaluate its supporting evidence and conclusions.
ENG 103
Reinforce students’ skills in evaluating and synthesizing primary and secondary sources in support of a well-reasoned argument.
ENG 259
Reinforce students’ ability to evaluate and synthesize research sources and integrate them effectively into written documents while employing the conventions of ethical attribution and citation and avoiding plagiarism.
Scaffolded Assignments
ENA 101: Code It to Decode It (J. Elizabeth Clark)
This activity is a fun, hands-on chance for students to interact with a text in your course. You can use it for any textual assignment where you want students to engage in a deeper close-reading activity. Since many students read course readings online, I like to create an opportunity to interact with a text physically, encouraging them to mark up a copy of the text. The goal here is reading comprehension and summary.
Materials needed: photocopies of the text (or a computer lab or shared Zoom screen with easy access to the highlighter mode); a few sets of highlighters in 3 colors of your choice. I use green, pink, and yellow.
Step One: Provide students with highlighters and a text previously discussed in class. I find this works best if it’s a text where there’s been some confusion. Ask students to slowly re-read (I also encourage reading aloud) and mark up the text with 3 colors:
- Anything that seems to be the central idea or a key to understanding the text: green
- Anything idea that’s confusing: pink
- Any word that they don’t know: yellow
Make 3 columns on the board: green, pink, and yellow. When students are finished reading, have them add their green, pink, and yellow annotations to the board. [If you are doing this exercise virtually, you can use the WhiteBoard in Zoom or a shared Google Doc with 3 columns or a threaded discussion in Blackboard as an alternative to the physical white board in the classroom.]
Step Two: assign students randomly to three groups: green, pink, and yellow. In their small groups:
The Green Group: compares and contrasts the central ideas suggested by the overall group. They read & decide whether or not the highlighted passages are, in fact, central components of the overall piece. They can suggest alternative main ideas, if they think the ones highlighted are not on point.
The Pink Group: tries to rephrase (or answer) the pink annotations.
The Yellow Group: looks up definitions
Step Three: all three groups share their findings. A final wrap up discussion focuses on whether or not the reading now makes more sense.
Optional Step Four: Once students are confident about the author’s overall meaning, I like to encourage students to talk back to the text. In this step, I ask students to react to the text and question it.
I ask them to mark places where they:
- agree with the author by placing a star
- disagree with the author by circling the area
- have questions for the author by placing a question mark.
We also ask journalistic questions:
- Who is the author? Who is the audience? Does this matter?
- What is the overall objective of this piece? [already answered in steps 1-3]
- When was it written? Does this matter?
- Where was it written? Does this matter?
We use this final step to transition to analysis and critique.
The ENA workshop is an ideal time for an activity like this where you have time to slow down the reading process, check in with students about their understanding of the text, and then use the experience as a springboard for deeper discussions, interpretations, and analysis.
ENG 101: Summary, Interpretation and Analysis (Marisa A. Klages-Bombich)
One of the things that I find students struggle with immensely is both summarizing and understanding what other authors have to say AND figuring out how sources connect to each other. Using an OER reading and a Chapter from an OER textbook, this assignment is designed to help students understand how they might position themselves as readers of a popular text and then how they might interpret the information being presented in that text before writing a summary where they identify a main idea, and supporting evidence as well as offer a response to the content. See below.
Read “Why Good People Turn Bad Online” in our anthology, 88 Open Essays you’ll find it on pages 438-449. You can also listen to the audio of this article, if you’d prefer. We are working on thinking about how to identify the main idea and supporting evidence in an essay as a precursor to writing our own essays that use secondary sources. To do this, we are going to look at “text-wrestling.” The term “text-wrestling” means thinking about all the elements that go into understanding what we are reading. You might have heard this called close-reading, interpretation and analysis.
In Chapter 4 of EmpoWord Abrams discusses interpretation, analysis and close-reading in several ways. We are going to use some of his language to help us think about the article “When Good People Turn Bad Online.”
See this handout to work on this activity.
ENG 102: Closing Reading Activity (Rochell Isaac)
The process of writing begins with a close “reading” of the text. A successful reading of the text, to me, brings the work’s sub-text to the surface. Here is how the Harvard Writing Center defines close reading:
When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on a particular passage, or on the text as a whole. Your aim may be to notice all striking features of the text, including rhetorical features, structural elements, cultural references; or, your aim may be to notice only selected features of the text—for instance, oppositions and correspondences, or particular historical references. Either way, making these observations constitutes the first step in the process of close reading.
The second step is interpreting your observations. What we’re basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, as with inductive reasoning, close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to.
http://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-do-close-reading
Follow these Guidelines
I. Choose a passage, line or phrase in the text, Sonny’s Blues, to perform a close reading of the text. Choose a passage that you think is important and one worthy of deconstruction (choose passages with significant ideas, motifs or themes, and with rich imagery or language. Remember that the close reading is simply about your interpretation of the texts based on your analysis of the brief passage you’ve just read.
II. Read your selection slowly and take notes as you read. Be sure to mark—circle/underline—anything that seems relevant to you – even if you are unsure why a particular section of the text stands out.
III. Analyze the passage by considering the following questions:
1. What is the central meaning of the passage? What important information does it convey to the reader?
2. Does this passage symbolize a particular idea present in the entire work? Could this passage serve as a roadmap of what’s taking place in the text as a whole? Please explain.
3. What visual or sensory images appear in the passage? Be sure to check for symbols as well.
4. Examine the structure of the passage. How do significant words help signify a particular meaning? Do any words have multiple meanings? How can those phrases be read?
IV. Construct a descriptive thesis based on your observations of your chosen passage. Remember that this is your first step to arriving at an analytical thesis. You will go on to develop your argument using the text for support (textual evidence).
*Faculty can then utilize or have students review the close reading guidelines here as a precursor to a particular writing assignment.
ENG 103: Group Mark-up Exercise (Evelyn Burg)
To faculty: This exercise is for the third week of class when students in ENG103 need to begin to collect and read sources. It can be done in class or out, but the single document is marked up by all students. I used a Google doc and allowed all students to comment. I suggest faculty make a second copy since students will be working on the master.
To students: When you write a research paper, you will read formal texts with difficult vocabulary. Don’t be intimidated—all readers at all levels confront unfamiliar concepts and words. Jump in and mark up the text to make sense of it. This is a fun group exercise and you will see how others do it.
- Read OER Text College Writing: Prewriting chapter–“Responding to a text” (with embedded video) https://www.oercommons.org/courses/college-writing
- Watch Creative Commons video: “How to read an academic article” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKxm2HF_-k0
- Here is a link to a Google doc that is a section of difficult reading.
Read: Excerpt from Ravitch’s Reign of Error (taken from publisher’s website: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/228036/reign-of-error-by-diane-ravitch/)
a. Our doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MD4wMjIQz4szkWZBqWcWCd7YdGADkqCdmPzsQiJkhkc/edit?usp=sharing
b. Student groups will be assigned a portion of text. Each member must add three annotations to it in different paragraphs. These annotations can take the form of:
1. a definition of an unfamiliar or technical word;
2. a comment or question on the author’s meaning;
3. a reference to another writer or thinker who is similar or different in a significant way;
4. reference to a relevant current event related to the topic.
c. Finally, you must make a fourth comment on another student’s comment. Remain courteous! This document will begin to look very busy: that’s okay!
(For fellow faculty: There is a free sign-up for students and teachers and OER texts can be embedded in the class platform. Perusall also contains a useful text-marking feature.)
ENG 259: Close Reading & Response (Lara Kattekola)
Students in ENG 259, like students in all my courses, do more scanning than actual reading of course texts. Consequently, they cannot recall much detail or key points in the texts to write about them effectively. To engage students in their reading tasks, I introduce them to active reading strategies (see https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/active-reading-strategies) and remind them to utilize one or more strategies whenever they are assigned a reading. During the first half of the course, I also assign students one sample scholarly article text: Derek Steiner’s “The Communication Habits of Engineers: A Study of How Compositional Style and Time Affect the Production of Oral and Written Communication of Engineers” (Journal of Technical Writing & Communication, vol. 41, no. 1, Mar 2011, pp. 33–58).
I use Steiner’s article specifically to help support students’ reading of longer texts (such as those they may need to read for their technical report assignment) but also to help them understand the significant role writing plays in their future profession.
To help students manage their reading of Steiner’s article, we read and discuss the abstract in class together so they can become invested in the text before they need to begin reading it on their own. To help make their reading tasks manageable, I only assign a few pages of the article at a time. Lastly, I assign students a follow up writing assignment that targets key aspects/topics within the pages they read. What follows below is a reading and writing assignment for an early section of the article.
Reading: Read pages 36-40 of Steiner’s “Communications Habits of Engineers.”
Response: Write a response addressing A, B, & C. Be as specific as possible so that you are demonstrating your understanding of the article.
A. What is the method the researcher ultimately used and why did he use it? Also, what three criteria did the researcher use to analyze the responses of the subjects?
B. Include a reflection paragraph discussing whether or not the article has any significance for you as a future engineer. Explain some key points that you are personally taking away from the article.
C. Come up with two discussion questions based on the reading that can be used in a small or large group discussion. Discussion questions need to generate thinking and discussion; they are not questions to be answered with a simple yes or no. Instead, they should help you and your peers think more critically about the meaning of the article’s content and/or its significance to you all as future engineers.
Once you have two discussion questions, come up with one more:
- What question would you ask Steiner personally if you had the chance and why? How do you think Steiner would respond to that question?
