Teaching Reading In A Diverse Class Is Both A Challenge And An Honor
I am an English professor at Shoreline Community College, located in Shoreline, WA, a suburb of Seattle. I’ve taught English for a total of 30 years and still get butterflies in my stomach at the beginning of each quarter because every class is different and every student in the class has their own story and life experiences that they bring into the classroom every day.
When approached about writing a short essay describing how I teach reading in higher education, specifically in a community college, I was a little nervous because how I teach is very personal and my approach is simple. I’m not sure that anything I write here is original, but I’m happy to share some of my thoughts on teaching reading in higher education.
Reading is a skill that students are assumed to have already mastered to some degree once they enter transfer English classes, so we don’t really teach students how to read in the most basic sense. We teach students how to critically read, which takes various forms given the diverse population of students that we have in any given class. We have students that can interpret the meaning of words but not comprehend the meaning of the text they are reading. We have students that are literal readers, who have to learn to recognize and understand irony and metaphor when presented in the literature. We have students who are multilingual but not fluent in the English language and who are unfamiliar with popular idioms found in the United States. We have students from around the world and around the country. Homeless students and those who live in mansions.
What I have found is that the key to getting students to engage in reading is to choose topics and texts, not for their complexity, but for their relatability. I assign readings about gender, racial, ethnic, cultural, language, national, and sexual identities. Understanding their own otherness helps them have more compassion and acceptance of others. They become more curious than fearful or judgmental. I find that many students of all ages are just starting to develop a social identity and what social justice and actions on behalf of someone other than themselves might look like. And of course, because there’s also age, education, maturity, and experience diversity, students can learn from each other as much as they learn from me.
The text is the springboard to lively conversations and making connections; therefore, learning how to read a text to get the most meaning out of it is key.
I ask students to read first just to know what happens in a story or what an essay is about at the surface level. Some teachers request that students take notes along the way or highlight. I find that can be helpful for some and distracting for others, so I introduce the idea and suggest it for those who find it helpful, but I don’t insist. I’m not going to test them on every detail of a text. I tend to start with the big picture first, and I invite my students to do the same.
Usually, I begin by asking students to summarize what they read, identifying major points in an essay or pivotal points in a short story. This becomes the foundation upon which we build. Students then must think beyond what happened or what the author stated, but what is the significance of it.
I usually ask students 3 leading questions such as “Why do you think the author wrote this and for whom?” What message is the author trying to convey, if any?” and “What did you read in the text that makes you believe that?” I want them to think about why they think what they think and try to explain or defend their answers with specific references found in the text. That way, they must go back to the text to find those details that are now needed to support their responses. I want the students to consider the text individually and then compare their responses to the responses other students have to the questions. This way, they discover that either they didn’t read the text closely enough or the text may hold multiple layers of meaning, not just one, as is the case for most academic texts. Often my first assignment in a first year composition course will include narrative essays because they often are easier to deconstruct once a summary is completed.
Although there are great works of literature in all genres assigned that are a joy to read, reading in college is not for entertainment. Students soon learn that texts that are assigned in most English classes are meant to be studied, and that is what the questions, discussions, and revisiting the text to see what was missed is all about.
In the article, “Reading Beyond the Lines: Teaching Critical Reading in Higher Education” by Safiye İpek Kuru Goner and Yeliz Kizilay, the authors suggest that in higher education, critical reading is the focus, and I agree. They list several critical reading strategies citing M. Larking’s “Critical Reading Strategies in the Advanced English Classroom” that teachers should use to help students appreciate texts that they are introduced to in college,
Critical Reading Strategies
Distinguish main and supporting ideas.
- Evaluate the credibility of the claims.
- Make relevant inferences about the text.
- Make judgments about how the text is argued.
- Question the author’s assumptions.
- Decide how to use the text for your own study.
- Identify rhetorical devices.
- Identify power relations.
- Evaluate the quality of the text.
- Distinguish between fact and opinion (Gönen & Kizilay 75)
The number and degree to which I apply any of these critical reading strategies depend largely on the course level, course outcomes, and my students’ abilities collectively and individually; however, I appreciate the need to include evaluation of sources, to recognize power and privilege, and to question an author regardless of their real or perceived authority (75). It starts with students understanding the text, its significance and purpose, which is what I described as how I first approach teaching students critical reading.
Works Cited
Gönen, Safiye İpek Kuru, and Yeliz Kizilay. “Reading Beyond the Lines: Teaching Critical Reading in Higher Education.” The Reading Matrix: An International Online Journal. vol. 22, no. 1, 1 Apr. 2022, pp. 73–92.
https://www.readingmatrix.com/files/27-mb6vs3ty.pdf