Part 1 READING FOR UNDERSTANDING

Many college students, unless they have received intensive instruction and feedback on writing analyses, tend to simply retell the content/story or say they liked or agreed with it or not. They do not know what it means to analyze. Some say they do not feel qualified to analyze a professional’s work.

One of the biggest problems in learning to analyze is that students have not read the material more than once. Even if they read it one time, it was only a surface reading or skimming. With such cursory attention, understanding is difficult and analysis is impossible.

Reading closely and making annotations must be modeled explicitly and practiced. Sample readings with annotations are often available in textbooks, but students will frequently glance over those without interacting with the text.

Although students may find it laborious and pointless, walking through a text selection paragraph by paragraph to extract meaning can turn out to be illuminating. After reading each paragraph the instructor can ask, “What was the big idea in that paragraph?”, “Can you summarize the paragraph in one short sentence or one word?” At this point students are tempted to point to the topic sentence or thesis statement. Students can be asked to create a sentence of a certain word length or to create a Haiku. Either way they are forced to look for the big ideas.

Once the instructor has walked students through this process using a few paragraphs, students can be given time to practice either individually or in small groups. I have had each group visually map the reading selection on the white board with numbered columns corresponding to the paragraphs. They must identify the big idea with one word or a Haiku. This can also be done with chapters of a novel or acts in a play.

I have created two handouts to accompany this post. One provides directions for using Haiku as a summarizing tool and the other walks through  planning and writing a rhetorical analysis.

A strategy for summarizing difficult reading material using Haiku

helping students plan and write a rhetorical analysis (2)