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I had not thought of reading and writing as similar acts of composing that are continuous, recurring, and recursive transactions as Tierney & Pearson (1983) propose. I found it interesting to read about how the composing process is parallel to reading and writing in the aspects of planning, drafting, aligning, revising, and monitoring. In the past I have designed lessons and assignments that encourage students to re-read or re-write the text in a revisionary process in order to build deep learning and transfer knowledge, but I had not considered how it could be used as a way for readers to deliberate and reflect on the meaning they are making of the text. I know the writer must consider their audience and purpose, but Tierney & Pearson go a step further to explain that readers and writers use their background of experiences to make meaning together. Overall, I enjoyed reading about how the symbiotic relationship between the reader and writer work together to make meaning of the text.

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Rosenblatt (1994) offers a great explanation of different kinds of reading activities based on whether the reader focuses their attention on the information they will have after reading (efferent) or how the reader feels during the actual event of reading (aesthetic). When I teach imaginative literature as an English teacher, I encourage my students to share in oral and written discourse their experiences while they are reading. We examine the sound devices and figurative language that the author uses to invoke a specific mood in the reader and consider how effective the author’s choices were. There are moments when I will ask students to investigate a topic by reading nonfiction in order to produce an expository speech or essay that will requires them to conduct an efferent reading that focuses on obtaining information. I believe both efferent and aesthetic readings are valuable skills for students to both glean knowledge afterwards or analyze the impact of the text during reading.

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I found Harkin’s explanation of the power of meaning making to be interesting. He states that the theory boom took the power of meaning making away from the author and gave it to any old reader. When I did my Teaching Portfolio for ENG 654 Teaching College-Level Literature I focused my syllabus and assignments on the reader-response theory because I was attracted to the power it gave the students to explore their unique and individual interpretations of the text. When teaching concurrent enrollment or Advanced Placement courses in high school, I encourage my students to develop unusual interpretations of the text and support their argument thoroughly with evidence from the text, real-life case studies as proof, and persuasive strategies in their oral and written discourse. When I scored the free response portion of the AP English Literature and Composition exam I found that Harkin’s assertion that different readers arrive at similar interpretations to be true. It was amazing to read 1,500+ essays about either the same prose/poetry passage or the theme from any novel and read the exact same essay 1,495 times because all of the authors shared the same identity as high school Seniors. It is rare to get an essay that presents a distinct analysis (well) and they generally score much higher because their interpretation posed a new perspective. I always encouraged my students to take the risk of presenting a new idea because the scorer will reward their efforts.

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In contrast to Harkin’s (2005) claim that different readers can arrive at similar interpretations, Haas & Flower (1989) make the argument that the complexity of the reading process causes people to construct vastly different interpretations of the same text. As I was reading I considered how the aesthetic reading that Rosenblatt (1994) describes when the reader focuses on how they feel while reading may explain this phenomenon. While the author may intend for the reader to think or act upon the text in a certain way as Tierney & Pearson (1983) suggest, readers may have a different reaction or interpretation of the text than the author had envisioned due to their background knowledge, prior experiences, response to cues in the text, degree of proficiency as a reader, or ability to build a multi-faceted representation of meaning. I have found even in myself as a reader that when I re-read a text I may interpret it differently each time. For example, when I was in 11th grade I was assigned to read the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker for my AP English Language and Composition course and I was enthralled by the gothic genre that it encapsulated. When I was serving in the Peace Corps I read the book again 6 years later and I appreciated how the information was revealed the reader in the form of letters since that was the only communication I had in English with family and friends throughout the past year. Seven years later I taught “Dracula” in my AP English Literature and Composition course and my Latin American Catholic students explored themes of Christianity that I had never considered during prior readings. As an avid reader and a literature teacher, what I love most about the experience of reading is that my perspective in that moment and location influences how I interpret the text, and many years later, with a fresh perspective I may view the text differently.

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I thought Harrington’s (1997) description of how the student reader and writer’s relationship to the text has evolved was interesting. As a student I felt the disparity between the texts that I produced and those that I read by superior geniuses. When I was very young I enjoyed writing and inventing stories, but as I progressed in my student career I lost confidence in my own work and deferred to the literature of classic authors whose invention was inaccessible to me. I continued reading aesthetically for enjoyment, however I didn’t produce writing beyond academic tasks. While Harrington’s 1997 article was published when I was in 7th grade and claims that teachers would begin including student writing with established writers to break down the boundaries through careful analysis of student texts that published authors received, the reality is that throughout my experience as a student I more readily identify with the 18th century emergent belletristic approach to reading rather than the 21st century connection between reading and writing. As an educator I attempt to extol student writing by praising their efforts, displaying a published version of their final text, and offering opportunities to evaluate and analyze their work. As I reflect on my own experiences as a student feeling that my written discourse has not lived up to the works of classic authors, I wonder if my efforts to give my student’s writing authorial merit has been accomplished or if they feel the same separation from published authors as I do?

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This is just a question that sparked as I was typing up my response. For non-aesthetic reading, which is basically what most classes are concerned with especially STEM, does a problem lie here? Granted it is probably different for textbooks rather than literature, but textbooks could be considered a form literature? How can we incorporate literature in STEM classes? Or should we? That is A LOT of questions that came up, which I am not even sure what answers I would have for them.

I think her theory of reading connected to the condition of music relates to us as a reader being completely absorbed by the work like a performer is when they are producing. "Sensing, clarifying, structuring, and savoring that experience as it unfolds." The same can be said for when we are reading a piece of literature.

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The three types of reading that Haas and Flower explain are 1. Content Reading which is reading for information (like non aesthetic reading) 2. Critical Reading which is reading for a complex representation of meaning and 3. Rhetorical Reading which asks the reader to identify rhetorical situations to account for the author's purpose, context, and effect on the audience. Rhetorical reading allows the reader to relate to the larger world of discourse (i.e. participate and comment on different social events that are happening) and we can then recognize the author's purpose. Are they trying to persuade us using propaganda? That would be especially beneficial when watching the elections unfold.

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This article mentioned the use of Creative Nonfiction in composition and the benefits of this style. I had never heard of creative nonfiction until I took Teaching Creative Writing last semester. Two benefits I saw from this style are 1. Gaps require active comparison of general and particular. This has the author actively participate in the reading by comparing and creating their own meaning from the gaps in the writing. If everything was laid out for the reader, this higher level of thinking would not happen. 2. Select details and isolated scenes are made to carry the weight of meaning. These scenes make us think of the reasons behind something. It opens up to our own interpretations of how we may relate to something, which could be different than from someone else.

I looked at the second revised essay and really only had a comment on the organization. The line with the phrase "boxy body" seemed a bit out of place. I would also maybe move the phrase "sometimes I'd lie awake..." before "If I did muster the guts..". This just seemed to flow better in my opinion, but the order could have been different for the author, so it worked better for them.

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This was an interesting week as I think I have looked at literature in a different way. Seeing more of the reading for it being focused on "participating in discourse" I think is much more useful than reading great works for literary analysis. But then again, if we include specific pieces to address different social issues, one could be accused of bias for choosing these social problems. For example, if I chose a work about Stonewall Riots and the fight for gay and trans rights, students could be heavily turned off from that idea and not get anything out of the unit.

How do we find that balance?

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This was a pretty breezy read. The idea behind the article felt like the authors were trying to convince(?) the readers that reading and composition really do go hand-in-hand. As they write immediately in the article: “...one must begin to view reading and writing as essentially similar processes of meaning construction. Both are acts of composing” (p. 1). This is totally true, and it is something I have never really thought about in my time in college and in my time teaching. The fact that Tierney and Pearson compare composition and reading through the planning, drafting, aligning, revising, and monitoring phases was a completely new concept to me. After reading the article, I must say that I agree wholeheartedly with the assessment. Tierney and Pearson also write, “It seems students rarely pause to reflect on their ideas or to judge the quality of their developing interpretations. Nor do they often reread a text either from the same or a different perspective” (p. 16). I see this play out every day. As educators it takes explicit instruction of rereading (from different perspectives and just for understanding) for students to know it is okay to reread. My 8th graders are always shocked when I allow them to reread a text, and then they are even more shocked when they learn something new about a character, a moment, or a conflict. This article really opened my eyes up to some fascinating new understanding.

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This article really focused on the reader-response theory and the idea of “where has it gone?” There are countless discussions on, well, discussions. (I know there is a ton more to it than that, but I was not a total fan of this article; although, it was a quick read.) I feel like the crux of the article can be summed up in Harkin’s (2005) statement about Erica Lindemann’s response to Tate (that I loved so much last DL: “Unfortunately, however, discussions of reading have been so thoroughly conflated with discussions of teaching literature, of the purpose of English studies, of the future of the humanities, of the politics of general education, of the definitions and uses of literacy, and so forth, that a pedagogical or curricular decision not to teach literary texts in writing courses became or entailed a decision not to teach reading. That, I think, is what happened to reader-response theory” (p. 421). That lengthy thought really seems to be what our whole discussion over the use of literature in the composition classroom comes down to. I know for a fact that I will use literature, of some sort, in every composition classroom I teach. I have no desire NOT to use literature. What it comes down to is: What is the objective of the class? What kind of literature should I use for my students? And so forth. It really does help create some food for thought.

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Overall, this may have been my favorite article of the bi-weekly unit because of a simple section titled: “What is Good Reading?” I always ask myself that question. We, as educators and readers, do our best to always help ourselves and our students to construct meaning. That is really why we read. The most eye-opening part of the text by Haas and Flower (1988) reads, “While a content representation is often satisfactory - it certainly meets the needs of many pre-college read-to-take-a-test assignments - it falls short with talks or texts which require analysis and criticism. What many of our students can do is to construct representations of content, of structure, and of conventional features. What they often fail to do is move beyond content and convention and construct representations of texts as purposeful actions, arising from contexts, and with intended effects” (p. 170). I cannot emphasize it enough: I despise drill-and-skill based reading assessments, assignments, tests, etc. for especially juniors and seniors. We need to move the students beyond the “pre-college read-to-take-a-test assignments” because we are doing our students a horrible disservice. We need to move beyond the basic and get our students to really dig in and think. I believe for me that is where the true literature/composition connection can come into play. Am I wrong? I’m curious….

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This article fascinated me greatly. I loved reading about the idea of leaving gaps in writing. I have never thought about it, and it would be an interesting way to teach students to write. The whole article though can be summed up for me in the wonderful line: “Students must ask themselves why a certain piece goes here rather than there: to repeat a pattern of images, to balance a previous section of analysis, to create variety” (p. 19). There is so much thought that should go into strong and solid writing, and we need to teach our students to put in that time and effort. (Says the teacher/student who could get a phd in Procrastination.)