deadling with academic reading
TRANSCRIPT
www.le.ac.uk
Dealing with Academic Reading
Dr Christina Lima
English Language Teaching Unit University of Leicester
Overview
• Understanding the act of reading
• Readers’ relationships with texts
• Reading academic texts
• Reading strategies
• Academic Reading Circles
• Questions & Answers
www.le.ac.uk
“We were never born to read.”(Wolf, 2007, p.3)
• Listening and speaking are natural abilities• Reading requires a long learning process• Reading affected human evolution• Reading changes the brain• Our modern societies depend on reading
“Much of how we think and what we think about is based on insights and associations generated from what we read.” (Wolf, 2007, p.5)
By learning to read, “we have prolonged a memory form the beginning of our time, preserved a thought long after the thinker has stopped thinking, and made ourselves participants in an act of creation.” (Manguel, 1996,p.27-8)
The act of reading
Decoding
InterpretationCritique
New language
New writing system
Contextual meaning
Cultural references
Personal background
Critical thinking
Reading connections
Rose
rise -
ROSE-
risen
“Our understanding of a text does not consist any longer in a faithful adoption of the predominant or authorized readings of the time. It is up to the individual reader to stake out her own path to the potential meaning and truth of the text. Reading now becomes a problem in a new way.” (Ramberg and Gjesdal, 2013, online)
“As we read on we shed assumptions, revise beliefs, make more and more complex inferences and anticipations; each sentence opens up a horizon which is confirmed, challenged or undermined by the text.” (Eagleton, 2008, p.67)
Readers’ relationships with texts
“Reading is the dialogic process between both the text and the reader‘s heteroglossic selves occurring in a certain time and space where knowledge and meaning are created.” (Lima, 2013)
What readers do
Readers
&
Texts
Quote
Retell
Adopt words and expressions
Connect with real
life events
Connect with other
texts
Draw principles
and concepts
Reading academic texts
Academic reading is …
• Hardly ever pleasurable
• Done with a very specific objective
• An integral part of any course
• An important component of research
Academic writing almost inevitably leads to writing.
Reading academic texts
Academic reading requires:
• High levels of language proficiency
• Familiarity with specific vocabulary
• Knowledge to the subject matter
• High levels of concentration
• Capacity to think critically
• Practice
• Time
‘Books, quite rightly are associated with difficulty, and difficulty in our world has acquired a negative sense which it did not always have. The Latin expression “per ardua ad astra” “through difficulties we reach the stars”, is almost incomprehensible to us since everything is expected to be obtainable with the least possible expenditure.’ (Manguel, 2010, p. 158)
What academic readers do
Readers
&
Texts
Quote
Retell
Adopt words and expressions
Connect with real
life events
Connect with other
texts
Draw principles
and concepts
Understand citations and
references
Paraphrase
and summarize
Learn and use
new vocabulary
Connect with research in the field
Conduct a
literature review
Understand and
critique relevant
theories
Reading strategies
• Scanning & Skimming
• Questioning
• Reading
• Recalling
• Reviewing
Academic Reading Circles
Problems that Tyson Seburnnoticed with his students:
• Superficial reading
• Unable to discuss questions about the text
• Focus on lexical level.
• Applied understanding was rare
• Inability to synthesise content from a variety of texts
Academic Reading Circles
Group leader
Visualizer
ConnectorContextualizer
Highlighter
Establish initial group
comprehension benchmark
– lead group work
discussion
Organize key
text concepts
visually in
various forms to
help see text
concepts
differently
Find connections,
obvious or subtle
between text concepts
and other studies
Research key
contextual references
for helpful background
info for the reader
Focus on
lexical items to
facilitate
comprehension
and improve
ability to
engage with
the text
Final considerations
• Reading is an essential human activity
• Reading is fundamental part of academic life
• Reading leads to thinking
• Deep reading is a slow and complex process
• Reading strategies can be useful
• Reading in groups can help to deal with texts
There are no good writers who are not good readers.
References
• Eagleton, T., 2008. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis. MN: University of Minnesota Press.
• Lima, C. 2013. Accounts from an Online Reading Group for English Language Teachers Worldwide. PhD. Open University, UK
• Manguel, A., 1996. A History of Reading. New York: Viking.
• Manguel, A., 2010. A Reader on Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Ramberg, B. and Gjesdal, K., 2013. Hermeneutics. In: E.N. Zalta (ed). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Online] Available at: <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/hermeneutics/> [Accessed 21 May 2013].
• Seburn, T,. 2015. Academic Reading Circles (ARC). [online] Available at http://fourc.ca/arc/ [Accessed 22 Apr 2015]
• Wolf, M., 2008. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. London: Icon.
