Monday, July 18, 2011
Monday's H&F Discussion: How & Why We Read
In a few questions at the end of the H&F article, Downs and Wardle ask you to consider how H&F's ideas about reading might be different than how we're used to thinking about it. Respond here to D&W's "Questions for Discussion and Journaling" #2, 4, and 5. When possible, try to reference specific passages from H&F's article and document appropriately. That way, we can begin to see how your ideas are developing in response to what you're reading. Once you see your peers' responses, respond to at least one (ask questions, make connections between what they say and your own experiences, make a connection back to the reading based on what your peers have said, etc.). I'll monitor the discussion throughout the day to see how it's progressing. Please have your posts done by the end of the day:).
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Question #2
ReplyDelete“construct” “representations” is important to Hass and Flower because that’s basically the point of their research. They want to bring their point across so other teachers can understand that students can be thought to read/understand more than what’s actually written on the text. They want for the students to read/write in a more rhetorical way. To get out of the “knowledge-telling when they write, and knowledge-getting” when they read” (page 136, paragraph 51). To help the students move beyond the simple information exchange view they have to a more complex rhetorical model.
Question #4
They found out that the readers that use readings to simply convey information do not put any extra effort to try to understand more than what’s written on the text. They believe that the persons should be able to read and write in a more complex rhetorical way. That they should also be able to recognize important claims even when they are not explicitly spelled out in the text.
Question #5
To me “as purposeful actions” means to be able to infer what’s not being said but is being implied within the text.
As an example – page 127 – paragraph 18 where is talking about the facts listed on the experimental text “Social problems exist and psychological principles exist, but there’s a mismatch between them”, “there are two kinds of educational specialists – real-world and laboratory” though it was not written in plain text, it was implying that “Interaction of the two specialists is necessary to solve social problems.”
Question # 2
ReplyDeleteLanguage of construction and representation is important to Haas and Flower because it this is what helps the reader understand what they are reading. “Construct” and “representation” go hand in hand with each other while reading; these are Haas and Flower’s main interest about their research. They want to help students get into the role of rhetorical reading, “people must be able to construct elaborate representations of meaning, and they must have the strategies to do so” (135). The study showed that rhetorical reading “may be an important element in the larger process of critical reading” (pg.135).
Question # 4
They criticize reading that is only for “information exchange” because they’re not looking further in to the context. The reader is not trying to look at in a rhetorical way, which they feel is the best way based off of this study. They critique that if they would read in a rhetorical way then maybe they would better understand the difficult context. It’s like reading in a “thinking out of the box” way which takes the reader out of just reading to get the information.
Question # 5
“Purposeful actions” means to be a critical thinker while reading. Which that “involves more than careful reading for content….” (Pg. 125). It’s a type of action that goes beyond just reading and requires criticism and analysis from the reader. I’ve seen myself doing this a lot these actions while reading this book; I can’t skim through it and understand everything that I am reading.
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ReplyDeleteQuestion #2
ReplyDeleteHass and Flower spend a lot of time pointing out that readers “construct” “representations” of a text’s content and what it means to do so because they are trying to help the reader understand what is being read. Their goal is for people to be able to “construct elaborate representations of the meaning.” (Wardle pg. 135) As stated in my one of my other posts, “their purpose is to help students to have a more “information-exchange” view, than the “simple” one that most students have. Helping them move more beyond their reading and writing.”
Question #4
I believe they seem to criticize reading that’s merely for “information exchange because students, or generally people now-in-days don’t seem to dig themselves into the context and fully understand it. Us, as readers, don’t seem to try looking into things in a rhetorical way, rather in a content representation, which is often satisfactory to us. In other words, like Brenda states, they want us to “think out of the box” and not just read what is there.
Question #5
To see texts as “purposeful actions” means to look deeper to what is being implied and not just to what is being written on the text. I believe an example to this would be found on page 133, paragraph 39. The facts say that “social problem exist” and that “psychological principles also exist, but that there’s a mismatch between them.” It is implying that “the two kinds of specialist should interact.”
Question #2
ReplyDeleteI think that constructive is important to them because it basically means (pg 135 paragraph 46) is that the readers are trying to understand what the author is writing about. They want the reader to actually understand what the author wants us to know and the context of what they are writing about. Representations (pg 135 paragraph 47) are important because it is more visible and seen also some people learn more this way than others. I think it is different by the way that they want to teach the students in their own rhetorical way although they know it will be hard for students to learn. I think that the rhetorical reading is mainly critical thinking because you would have to think way more than what you already do.
Question #4
I think Haas and Flower criticize reading that’s only for information exchange because the context is only given them information and not really putting the person to think beyond. The readers don’t even make the effort to understand what they are given if it is already there for them.
Question #5
I think what “as purposeful actions” means is that when you use critical reading and you go beyond the content. Also I think it mainly uses the analysis from a reader because it is an important text that has to be read and understood correctly.
2. Without the use of the language of "Construction and "Representation" It would be extremely difficult to comprehend what it is you are reading. The authors stress these points a lot in their articles and they believe that they are key points in rhetorical reading. It differs from the regular ways a student reads because it is a way of helping the student actually process the information, understand it and retain the knowledge rather than simply reading over information
ReplyDelete4. The authors criticize the fact that most readers don't understand the amount of information that they should when they read. They feel that by reading in a rhetorical way you are able to better examine the writing and gain a better understanding about what is trying to be conveyed.
5. Seeing a text as a purposeful action to me is one that allows you to gain as much information and really understanding what the author is really trying to say.
An example in this text would be-
"It is useful to see rhetorical reading not as a separate and different strategy but as a progressive enlargement of the constructed meaning of a text." [page 132]
This text is the perfect example of what I think purposeful action is. It shows what the entire point of the authors article is about.
2. Construction and representation is important to Haas and Flower because they realize that it is a rhetorical strategy that will help less-experienced readers move on from the information-exchange view to critical reading. The readers will be able to recognize stated as well as inferred claims.
ReplyDelete4. Haas and Flower criticize the information-exchange model because they believe it is a dead end road when it comes to discovering the information. Readers will only pull out content from the article instead of pulling out content from multiple levels.
5. To me, "as purposeful actions" means to look beyond what is being told in the text. "Like the modern world, modern scientific psychology is extremely technical and complex. The application of any particular set of psychological principles to any particular real problem requires a double specialist: a specialist in the scientific area, and a specialist in the real area" (Farnham-Diggory 126).
2. I feel that representation and construction is important to Haas and Flowers because the whole point of their reseach was to prove that the brain worked as a machine and feel machines work through a process of construction and representation. When we usually talk about how readers read it is usually that all people understand the text the way the author wrote it, instead we all come from different backgrounds and when reading a specific text we all can infer a different outcome.
ReplyDelete4. They consider reading that is merely for information exchange isn't really just an exchange of information it also include a bit of the authors own opinion, which can sway the reader to have the same opinion.
5. What I feel "purposeful actions" means is to see between the lines rather than on the line (if that makes sense). We often just read and get the basic, 2-D,informational aspect of the context rather than the complex, 3-D, underlying meaning of it. An example would be a poem that I read from Langston Hughes called "Mother to Son" it described a stair she was climbing but the entire time she was trying to tell her son to not give up on life.
# 2 It is important because it helps to understand a recuriing frustration for college teachers (pg. 124). Haas and Flower are intrested in how readers go about "constructing" meaning and the consturctive strategies they us to do so. Good readers tend to paraphrase rather than analyze and summarize rather than criticize texts.
ReplyDelete#4. We tend to only read the text but not actually analyze on what wer just read. I am guilty of doing this myself alot also. Haas and Flower want readers to read in a rhetorical way. if you are not a rhetorical reader we tend to believe everything we read.
#5. I think "as purposeful actions" means to think and analyze each text instead of just reading it. It means to understand the words that are being read and to try to understand what teh author wants you to understand and what point he is trying to get across to the reader
#2.Haas and Flower discussed about “construct” “representations” because it was important to them it helps them identify the different types of readers there are and they want to help the students help understand what they are reading. (Wardle pg. 135) The constructive process we observed in readers actively trying to understand the author’s intent, the context, and how other readers might respond appears to be a good basis for recognizing claims, especially unstated ones the reader must infer. As Haas and Flower mentioned it’s different to what happens when readers read by reading to another extent to improve their abilities in reading.
ReplyDelete#4.Haas and Flower criticize “information exchange” basically because students tend to just read the information. They want students to be able to gain knowledge by being able to read rhetorically and understand the text of what they read. Students are lazy and don’t want to think about being able to construct meaning.
#5.“What they often fail to do is to move beyond content and convention and construct representations of texts as purposeful actions, arising form contexts, and with intended effects. (Wardle pg. 125) In other words, it means to go beyond reading to a new level. Readers have to be able to read critically and analyze and construct when they read. When I read I can’t fully understand what I read because I just read the information and I don’t think critically while I read.
#2
ReplyDelete"construct representations" is how from the 10 different readers differ in the way they intake information read and come up with their own idea of what the reading was about.
#4
Information exchange allows college students to pass tests but it does not allow them for writings that require more in depth analysis. Readers fall between content and function strategies and fail to become rhetorical.
#5
"as purposeful action" means readers lack a "complex representation of meaning" (Wardle pg. 125) which is more than understanding the context. A rhetoric reader thinks like a writer.
#2.) Without the use of the language of "Construction and "Representation" It would be extremely difficult to comprehend what it is you are reading.It is a rhetorical strategy that helps less-experienced readers move on from the information exchange to view as critical reading.
ReplyDelete#4.) Information exchange just gives students something to read and be able to use it during test. H&F wants to have students think outside the box like put their own meaning into the reading.
#5.) I think purposeful action is the ability to make a better understanding to the text read for example to breakdown everything in the text to however small you need to.
2- It is important to H & F research that construct representations are looked at as mental images of what you are reading. They state "the process of constructing this representation is carried out by both highly automated process of recognition and inference..." (pp. 123). This concept helps the readers uncover the many meanings of what a passage may say and molding the reader into a critical thinker.
ReplyDelete4- Information exchange is much more in line with robotic thinking. It makes a student read something that is intended to be understood in one way; yet mental representations are different for all. H & F encourage the reader to use strategies for constructing meaning through observational and experimental studies.
5- Rather than just careful reading, H& F suggest "...critical thinking involves more than identification of conventional features of discourse and more than evaluation based agreeing or disagreeing"(pp 125). Purposeful actions leads the reader to understand a premise and argument of a reading. Additionally the reader would need to defend their mental representations based on what they understand they are reading.
Question#2
ReplyDeleteThe language of construction and representation is so important to Haas & Flower because they believe that helps the student understand what he/she is reading. Its different from what usually happens when readers read in the sense that readers construct representations while reading,. "They focus on knowledge-getting while reading."(pg.136)
Question#4
Haas & Flower criticize reading that's merely for "information exchange" because they believe it doesn't help the reader actually learn anything. They consider that by using readings to convey information they dont give the reader the opportunity to "think outside the box" because they are just receiving information.
Question#5
To see text "as purposeful actions" means that students fail to "move beyond content and convention and construct representations"(pg.125) Students tend to read without actually knowing what they read.
2. "construction" and "representation" were so important to Haas and Flower because they believe that without them, a student simply reads words on a page and does not comprehend and "construct" their own meanings.
ReplyDelete4. They do not approve using reading just to read. They believe reading is to construct and not only to convey information.
5. Seeing texts as purposeful actions means seeing texts as serving a specific purpose. Many authors such as Tennyson wrote for specific purposes like his "In Memoriam" to remember his dear friend.