Monday, July 18, 2011
Monday's H&F Discussion: Rhetorical Situation & Exigence
In a couple of questions that Downs and Wardle write after the Haas & Flowers article, they ask you to think about why H&F did this research and what their "rhetorical situation" was. So, I'd like you to respond to that here. Why did H&F do this research? What did they hope to learn? And why did they write the article after they did the research? Who was meant to read it, and how can you tell? What are they trying to do by writing it?
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Haas and Flower were researching into how reading contributes to writing in an attempt at understanding what experienced readers do differently from less experienced readers.
ReplyDeleteWith answers, less effective readers could be instructed to become better readers by applying what had been learned in regard to the differences in reading methods so that everyone could read at an efficient level.
They wrote this article to help teachers get students to understand that reading and writing is not merely an information exchange of "knowledge giving" and "knowledge getting", but rather a more complex rhetorical model that helps to construct meaning.
They were trying to compare the different types of readers, those that “read for information” and those that read/interpret/and build multi-faceted representations in order to understand the most of what they are reading. They were trying to understand why some “good” readers “paraphrase rather than analyze, summarize rather than criticize texts” (pg 124-125) They don’t understand why if the students are “good readers” they don’t take the extra step to analyze the text, but instead they do less than what the teachers hope for. I believe this article was written in order to inform the teachers that they can help the students to read to understand, interpret, and build rhetorical representations of all the text they are reading; instead of settling with “read for information” and understand the little they can without having to think/analyze pass that point.
ReplyDeleteOn page 135, paragraph 47 it says “This is the kind of meaning building we would like students to do, and rhetorical reading is one strategy that may help them do it. In saying this, however, we recognize that this knowledge will do us little good if we can’t use it to help students”. Page 136, paragraph 48 “Can we expect merely to hand students tools for building rich representations of text and set them to work? Or will rhetorical reading require active teaching-teaching by direct instruction, by modeling, and by encouraging students to become contributing and committed members of rhetorical communities?” so by reading these different passages I think that this research was meant to be read by teachers.
The purpose of writing this research was to inform the teacher on how to help the students move beyond the simple “information exchange” type of mine/thinking that some students have. And to help them move to a different level where they can think rhetorical in both their reading and writing.
Haas and Flower did a research on college students in the late 1980s and early 1990s to “understand what experienced readers do differently from less-experienced ones (Pg. 120).” In this study they found that these students used three different techniques. Content Strategies, “what the text is about,” Functional Feature Strategies, “used to name what the text was doing,” and Rhetorical Strategies, “take a step beyond the text itself.” (Pg. 129-130). They found that the experienced readers used rhetorical strategies, as opposed to using functional feature strategies and content strategies.
ReplyDeleteThey wrote this article after doing the research since it is “observational rather than experimental” (pg. 134). They wanted to observe their student reader and their experienced reader, and find the techniques that they choose to use. They made note of their student’s claims and why certain students recognized some claims sooner than others.
This article seems to be targeted at teachers to help them understand how to get students to get into the role of Rhetorical Reading. Seems like college students and professors and meant to read it so they can also understand the different techniques that certain students use. Their main focus is to teach us how to get into the role of rhetorical reading. Haas and Flower wrote this article to inform others of this study and of their results.
Haas and Flower conducted a survey in the late 1980s and early 1990s in order to understand what “experienced” readers do differently from “less-experienced ones.” (Wardle Pg. 120) While doing their research they found out that there were three main strategies: content strategies, functional feature strategies, and rhetorical strategies. (Wardle pg. 121)
ReplyDeleteContent strategies, “what the text is about, “meaning what is being summarized or paraphrased. (Wardle pg. 129) Functional/feature strategies, used to refer to conventional features of disclosure, often used to name what the text is “doing” not what it’s “saying,” which is what content strategies do. Rhetorical strategies “take a step beyond the text itself,” meaning they are used to “re-create or infer the rhetorical situation of the text they are reading.” (Wardle pg. 130)
It then states that this article was written to help student readers build rhetorical representations of the text by extracting information from the text. They called that type of content reading “knowledge-getting.” Student readers paraphrase content, and the experienced reader does that and more. (Wardle pg. 131-132) It then says that the role of rhetorical reading is what they “would like students to do, and it is one strategy that may help them do it,” knowing also that it won’t do any good if it won’t help students. (Wardle pg. 135)
The purpose was 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.
Haas and Flower did this research to determine the difference between experienced and non-experienced readers. They were hoping to learn “… how readers go about ‘constructing’ meaning and the constructed strategies to do so.” [page 125]
ReplyDeleteI understood that this essay was done after the research because it was stated on page 134 was not an experimental one but rather an observational one. They wanted to make sure they had as much facts and information about these rhetorical reading habits as possible.
It seems that this article was meant to be read by students because it addresses the students reading habits like they are trying to give advice on how to help assist the students to learn to analyze and become better readers.
They are trying to inform people about rhetorical reading strategies and give them ideas on how to advance the ways the read, write and research.
-Haas and Flower conducted this research to see the differences between how experienced readers read and non-experienced readers read.
ReplyDelete-They learned that more experienced readers used 'rhetorical reading strategies' to understand difficult texts better. They wanted to gain as much information on these 'rhetorical reading strategies' as they possibly could. This article was directed towards students and teachers. Students could gain more on how to better their reading skills whether experienced readers or non-experienced readers. Teachers could learn how to guide their students in the right direction in their reading skills.
-They were hoping to understand and give a better view to others about these differences. With this information they could later become better readers and writers.
Haas and Flower conducted this research to find out the differences in the reading comprehension of experienced readers and less-experienced readers. The authors wrote the article after the research had been done because this was more of an observational than experimental research. Haas and Flowers instructed students of varied comprehension experience to read a passage and interpret what they thought about it. The students were being recorded as they went through the "think-aloud protocol". After all the data was recorded, the researchers went back to the tapes to study them further.
ReplyDeleteThere were multiple references made in the article that lead me to believe that teachers were the chosen audience for this article. "This makes the goals of teacher and researcher look very much alike: both the teacher and the researcher are interested in the means by which readers (especially students) construct multi-faceted representations, or "meaning"" (Haas and Flower 124).
The authors of this article are trying to transform the ways that teachers teach their students. They gave statistics that backed up their theory on rhetorical reading and comprehension.
Haas and Flower did this research to show how "reading contributed to writing" (H&F, 120). "[T]hey were trying to understand what experienced readers do differently from less-experienced ones" (H&F,120). The reason why they wrote this article after they did the research was because it was "observational rather than experimental" (H&F 134). I feel that they were writing this article to inform the teachers how to help students, "Helping student move beyond this simple, information-exchange view to a more complex model-...is one of the very real tasks which faces US teachers" (H&F, 136).
ReplyDeleteHaas and Flower wrote an article about researching the different types of readers there are. They wanted to know what experienced and non-experienced readers do differently while reading. Haas and Flower discovered that the experienced readers not only read the information like the non-experienced readers but also read rhetorically. Rhetorical readings mean the readers are able to construct meaning from the text. On page 122, Haas and Flower mention that they not only use the text to construct meaning but also read world experienced to gain knowledge. They wrote the article after doing research because since this was an observational research and not an experiment. They learned new facts and knowledge from this research, which was meant for teachers and students to get the message across to. It was addressed to teachers by informing them to improve a students reading they must be able to read rhetorically. Haas and Flower wanted students to know the mistakes they do when they read. They informed them what they should be doing when they read and what they should focus on and think about when they read. Some students have trouble reading and Haas and Flower wanted to be able to help improve the students reading abilities and give them information on what is needed to read rhetorically.
ReplyDeleteHaas and Flower did a research to try to understand what experienced readers do differently from less experienced ones (pg. 120) They were hope to learn differnt types of thinking methods that each student had done and what were the result of them. They found out that more experienced readers used rhetorical reading strategies. It is important to be a rehtorical reader when you dont have a teacher that is able to go over the book or text with you. They wrote the article because the had found differnt strategies to help improve how teachers can help students understand the information in your texts. Teachers were meant to read it because they are trying to encourage teachers to move from merely teaching texts to teaching readers. (pg. 124)
ReplyDeleteHaas and Flower conducted the research to show how being a good reader can help contribute to being a even better writer. They used the comparison between experienced readers and less- experienced readers. They were hoping to gain an understanding “… how readers go about ‘constructing’ meaning and the constructed strategies to do so.” [page 125]
ReplyDeleteThey wrote an article for this research to inform the teachers on how to help the students move from just the simple “information exchange” type of mine/thinking that some students show, and to help them move to a different level where they can think rhetorical in both their reading and writing.
This research was conducted to teach college teachers how they teach reading texts and to also show approaches between reading and writing.
ReplyDeleteThey hoped to earn about the constructive rhetorical view of reading by two ways:
One is to see the actual thinking process of reading and two if the readers belong to the theories described.
The article was written after because it was after they conducted their observations.
This article was meant for college teachers to get a better understanding of the thinking process a reader gets and how the information read gets interpreted.
Haas & Flowers research was about the idea that human readers are much like information processors. There is an interesting base to their theory "...they tend to talk about minds as quite machine-like". How the human mind works is a direct correlation about how you store information about what you learn. I know from experience, I am a mix of a reflection and action oriented learner. Others like to imprint what they have learned through memory and others may like a rhetorical method as Hass & Flowers suggest. The three methods H & F discuss is 1)Content 2)Function/Feature and 3)Rhetorical. Rhetorical reading uses concepts of cognitive processes and information construction.
ReplyDeleteHaas and Flower wanted to "learn something about the construction of meaning by readers"(pg.125) In order to do that they conducted a research on how experience readers read and on how un-experienced readers read.Haas and Flower "were interested in how readers go about constructing meaning and the constructive strategies they use to do so."(pg.125) Since they were observing different types of readers Haas and Flower wrote the article after the research. I think Haas and Flower wrote this article for teachers to read. By writing this article they are trying to inform teachers on how to help students how to read rhetorically.
ReplyDeleteHaas and Flower composed this research to explore the differences of "experienced and non experienced" readers and writers. They hoped to inform the teachers of all such students how to improve their students writing and reading skills.This was written after the research was performed to have a better feel for the subject and have solid ground for hypotheses just like in all research.
ReplyDelete