University Writing CenterI am a composition and rhetoric specialist, but for the past three years I have been working with reading specialists on a CSU task force to develop a 12th grade reading and writing curriculum. Because of that experience, when I heard faculty complain that students wait until after the discussion to read the material, I realized that students were saying something to us with that behavior. They were indicating that they don’t like to read difficult material cold.
In fact, all six of these problems can be addressed with a bit of pre-reading activity. One of the simplest pre-reading activities is the “anticipation guide.” Generally, an anticipation guide is a brief series of statements that are related to the topic of an article or chapter that students are about to read. The statements are set up in a true/false or agree/disagree format. In designing the guide you should
In our workshop we used a short article by Joan Didion about migraines. Before we read it, Carol gave us questions like the following:
Once students have answered these questions to the best of their ability, they have a strong desire to know if they are right. They also have an idea of what the article is about, and what information might be found there. They read looking for the answers to the questions. (By the way, the first statement is true; the second is false.) Taking a position on statements like these allows students to activate prior knowledge related to the topic of the reading, create a cognitive schema for assimilating the information and the concepts of the reading, and create a purpose for doing the reading.
Of course, other kinds of questions can be used, and there are other effective pre-reading activities. Almost any activity that gives students a bit of a map of the intellectual terrain and gets them engaged with the issues of the text before they begin to read will help. A little work before the reading is assigned will pay off in better discussions afterward.
