logo for Utah State University Press
The Case for Critical Literacy
A History of Reading in Writing Studies
Alice S. Horning
Utah State University Press, 2024
The Case for Critical Literacy explores the history of reading within writing studies and lays the foundation for understanding the impact of this critical, yet often untaught, skill. Every measure of students’ reading comprehension, whether digital or analog, demonstrates that between 50 and 80 percent of students are unable to capture the substance of a full discussion or evaluate material for authority, accuracy, currency, relevancy, appropriateness, and bias.
 
This book examines how college-level instruction reached this point and provides pedagogical strategies that writing instructors and teachers can use to address the problem. Alice Horning makes the case for the importance of critical reading in the teaching of writing with intentionality and imagination, while sharing glimpses of her own personal history with reading and writing. Horning provides the context for understanding what college faculty face in their classrooms and offers a history of critical literacy that explains why, to date, it has mostly neglected or ignored the diverse statuses of students’ reading challenges.
 
The Case for Critical Literacy explores actionable options to better meet students’ literacy needs. College and university faculty, especially writing instructors, will benefit from an understanding of what has happened in the field and what needs to change.
 
[more]

front cover of Mastering Academic Reading
Mastering Academic Reading
Lawrence J. Zwier with contributions by Matthew S. Weltig
University of Michigan Press, 2010

Mastering Academic Reading is meant to challenge advanced academically oriented students of English. The units and the readings within them are long. The comprehension and expansion exercises after them are demanding. The hoped-for outcome is that students trained using this textbook will be able to better hold their own in university classes where the reading volume across disciplines and vocabulary demands are high.

Almost every reading is taken, in minimally adapted form, from a book or academic / professional journal. Two introductory passages have been composed expressly for this book in order to provide narrowly focused background material. Beyond these pieces, readers are in the hands of “real-world” authors and their difficult, lexically diffuse, and allusion-filled creations. Journal articles and book excerpts predominate, but Mastering Academic Reading also offers  a book review and a government pamphlet as well.

Since one aspect of reading practice builds on others, the units are laid out in tiers, not in sections. Each unit has been organized into three tiers. In general, there is one reading per tier, although the first tier in Unit 3 contains two passages (both necessary to provide conceptual background for the other two tiers). Each reading is 3,500-5,000 words. The book focuses on the three primary goals of academic reading: reading to learn; reading to integrate, write, and critique texts; and reading for basic comprehension.

[more]

front cover of Reaching All Writers
Reaching All Writers
A Pedagogical Guide for Evolving College Writing Classrooms
Joanne Baird Giordano
Utah State University Press, 2023
Reaching All Writers brings together decades of writing studies experience, research, and scholarship to help organize first-year writing courses around inclusive teaching practices and foundational concepts that support disciplinary learning for all college writers, including students who have been excluded from more selective higher-education institutions.
 
Using threshold concepts and transfer as a foundation, the authors provide an invaluable resource for multiple contexts: instructors working off the tenure track and/or at multiple institutions; two-year college programs without a writing program administrator; and writing program graduate teaching assistant training courses. Each chapter includes an overview of a threshold concept, disciplinary background readings, practical teaching strategies, assignment and learning activity ideas, assessment principles, examples from student and instructor perspectives, and questions for reflection and discussion.
 
Reaching All Writers describes effective teaching practices to help all college writing instructors, regardless of their institutional contexts, make changes that support equitable and inclusive learning opportunities—with a focus on teaching students whose backgrounds and learning experiences are different from those with more educational or economic privilege. Both new and experienced teachers adapting first-year college writing courses will find the book’s blend of practical strategies and disciplinary knowledge a useful companion for facilitating new classroom and program needs or designing new teaching assistant training courses.
 
[more]

front cover of Reader's Choice, 6th Edition
Reader's Choice, 6th Edition
Sandra Silberstein, Barbara K. Dobson, and Mark A. Clarke
University of Michigan Press, 2023

In this new edition, Reader's Choice continues its legacy of teaching skills for academic success. The new edition of the classic textbook teaches readers that the most important skill is selecting the best reading strategies for solving everyday reading challenges. The exercises and readings in Reader's Choice help students become independent, efficient readers.

Reader’s Choice provides 9 units that teach progressively more complex reading strategies. These units are accompanied by skills-focused activities as well as full reading passages. Units include readings and materials from respected news sites, commonly used items like transit maps, excerpts from well-known literary works such as Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” and much more. Together, these readings provide engaging, real world examples that allow students to strengthen the reading skills vital to academic and career success.
 

In Reader’s Choice, 6th Edition, students will:

- Learn key critical reading skills for prose, charts, graphs, and data, such as analyzing context clues, using prefixes and suffixes, and more
- Develop contextual reading skills through real life scenarios and practice exercises  
- Engage with high-interest examples from popular news sources, contemporary literature, and scientific studies  
- Complete interactive online quizzes and exercises to supplement and measure student learning  

Reader’s Choice, 6th Edition is accompanied by a companion website featuring student resources and by a set of teaching materials supporting classroom use.

CEFR Levels: B1, B2, C1, C2

[more]

front cover of Readers for Life
Readers for Life
How Reading and Listening in Childhood Shapes Us
Edited by Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhönen
Reaktion Books, 2024
An anthology both personal and profound exploring the deep meaning of reading in our lives.
 
Readers for Life is a collection of essays, mainly specially commissioned for the book, by fiction authors and literary scholars, who reflect on their childhood or adolescent memories of reading. The essays explore how the act of reading shapes an individual, from our formative years into adulthood and beyond. Instead of focusing on reading as an act of escapism, or mere literacy, these writings celebrate reading as a lifelong, joyful experience that intertwines past and present. By revealing our diverse reading histories, the collection fosters awareness of the profound impact of reading on a person’s development and offers readers insights that will enrich their own literary experiences.
 
Featuring an introduction by editors Sander L. Gilman and Heta Pyrhönen, Readers for Life includes essays by Natalya Bekhta, Peter Brooks, Philip Davis, Linda and Michael Hutcheon, Sander L. Gilman, Daniel Mendelsohn, Laura Otis, Laura Oulanne, Heta Pyrhönen, Salman Rushdie, Cristina Sandu, Pajtim Statovci, and Maria Tatar, as well as an interview with Michael Rosen.
[more]

front cover of Reading in Tudor England
Reading in Tudor England
Eugene R. Kintgen
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996
Readers in the sixteenth century read (that is, interpreted) texts quite differently from the way contemporary readers do; they were trained to notice different aspects of a text and to process them differently.

Using educational works of Erasmus, Ascham, and others, commentaries on literary works, various kinds of religious guides and homilies, and self-improvement books, Kintgen has found specific evidence of these differences and makes imaginative use of it to draw fascinating and convincing conclusions about the art and practice of reading.  Kintgen ends by situating the book within literary theory, cognitive science, and literary studies.

Among the writers covered are Gabriel Harvey, E. K. (the commentator on The Shepheardes Calendar), Sir John Harrington, George Gascoigne, George Puttenham, Thomas Blundeville, and Angel Day.
[more]

front cover of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age
Slow Reading in a Hurried Age
David Mikics
Harvard University Press, 2013

Wrapped in the glow of the computer or phone screen, we cruise websites; we skim and skip. We glance for a brief moment at whatever catches our eye and then move on. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age reminds us of another mode of reading--the kind that requires our full attention and that has as its goal not the mere gathering of information but the deeper understanding that only good books can offer.

Slow Reading in a Hurried Age is a practical guide for anyone who yearns for a more meaningful and satisfying reading experience, and who wants to sharpen reading skills and improve concentration. David Mikics, a noted literary scholar, demonstrates exactly how the tried-and-true methods of slow reading can provide a more immersive, fulfilling experience. He begins with fourteen preliminary rules for slow reading and shows us how to apply them. The rules are followed by excursions into key genres, including short stories, novels, poems, plays, and essays.

Reading, Mikics says, should not be drudgery, and not mere escape either, but a way to live life at a higher pitch. A good book is a pathway to finding ourselves, by getting lost in the words and works of others.

[more]

front cover of Teaching Literacies in Diverse Contexts
Teaching Literacies in Diverse Contexts
Edited by Sinéad Harmey and Bobbie Kabuto
University College London, 2023
A practical guide to teaching literacy in all its varied contexts.
 
Literacy education doesn’t just happen in schools, with young children. It can take place in many locations, and at many different points in people’s lives. Literacy educators, therefore, need flexibility and a deep toolbox to meet their students’ diverse needs, regardless of whether they work in traditional school and college settings or in other environments with varied populations. Teaching Literacy in Diverse Contexts shows how practical experiences can be used in creative ways to support educator development for teaching literacy in a global context. Mentorship between a developing literacy educator and an experienced teacher educator is central to the book, and to the practical experiences in training or professional development that it focuses on. Chapters share the creative solutions discovered during mentorship that supported developing literacy educators to teach with authenticity in a number of contexts, including the adult learning sector, a rural community in Africa, and alongside parents of very sick children. Together, the chapters build a crucial resource for preparing a broad range of literacy educators to teach literacy in many contexts where policy on how best to teach reading and writing to diverse student bodies ebbs and flows.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter