Literacy - C14 - Winter Quarter - Week 6

Tovani is concerned about the comprehension abilities of adolescent readers. Why does Tovani talk about "fake reading"? How does this relate to the expectations and purposes for reading that he goes on to discuss? What do these have to do with comprehension?

There is probably not a literate person alive who has never engaged in the art of "fake reading," and that certainly includes me. If we are going to be completely honest, I have occasionally engaged in the practice during the Teacher Certification Program (but of course, not in either of my brilliantly taught literacy courses). But I can't really claim that this is a holdover from any practices learned in my adolescence. Sometimes it is as simple a matter as being unengaged and/or uninspired by an assigned reading (if somebody is engaging in fake reading for non-assigned reading then that may be indicative of a more serious social problem; it would be like reading Cliff Notes for pleasure, rather than reading actual literary works).

I know from experience that the first times (in junior high or high school) that I was assigned books that (at that point in time) really didn't connect with me (e.g. The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick) I ran right for the Cliff Notes. Could those books have been taught in a way that would have made me want to read the actual books instead of a synopsis? Perhaps, although I tend to doubt it. I had no trouble with the vocabulary, or even the diverse literary devices Melville employs. It just bored the crap out of me, and the effort of teachers to portray it as some sort of adventure novel about whaling didn't help matters. Sometimes it is simply a matter of age and readiness. When I eventually did read Moby Dick, in graduate school, I was mesmerized and fascinated by it, but only because I then possessed the knowledge and experience to appreciate the vastness and complexity of the book.

What I liked about Tovani is that she confronts the issue of "fake reading" head on, and has an open and honest discussion about it with her students, rather than just telling them that she knows all the so-called tricks and dodges. As she implies, it is in the choice of powerful and meaningful texts that we can begin to break students of this habit. Thankfully, many school districts no longer REQUIRE that third or sixth or eighth graders read a specific book, and that the discretion can often rest with the teacher, and, even more importantly, with the students themselves.

For instance, if a class is about to read Jack London's Call of the Wild, it may be a great strategy to introduce the book through an interesting newspaper or magazine article, or perhaps even a music video(!), and then to have a class discussion about it. Reading the first chapter out loud, as a group read, with lots of pauses for questions and discussion would also help. I think many of the strategies that Tovani puts forward, such as thinking aloud or annotating a text makes wonderful sense (mere highlighting, in my experience, can often be either a distraction or yet another way of shortcutting, i.e., skimming a text until you find something that you think is important - this may be OK in a history textbook, but would really hinder the enjoyment of a novel).

Part of the issue, for me, is that in my main placement, because it is a class of gifted children, nearly all of whom not only are above-average readers, but who, for the most part, also genuinely love to read, I don't have much day to day experience observing fake reading in practice. That is why it is so refreshing to read other people's experiences, especially those in lower grades, where fake reading is undoubedly more prevalent.

In the final analysis, comprehension has to do with deep, thoughtful thinking, and while it may seem counterintuitive to "teach" somebody how to think (which is another way of saying "comprehend"), Tovani's strategies allow students to connect their already active thinking processes into reading and comprehending a text. In other words, they need to be made aware of the thinking process itself, rather than to merely be told or admonished that they "need to think."