Conor Hilton: Blog 6

 I really really love this idea of trying to focus on and teach deep reading, and absolutely feel like it is something that my students often struggle with. I used to start class with a day about ‘how to read’ where we talked about much of the material suggested here, as far as different reading strategies go. I did not do that this semester and probably should have, but it fell off in the wildness that we all live in. 

I think one example of this from my students in my rhetoric class this semester comes from how they respond to The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld. The book is about ‘the media’, with a brief history of journalism, centered on the United States, moving into a conversation about biases present in the institution of journalism, and then some thoughts on what we can all do about it. My students have expressed a suspicion of ‘the media’, because it is “biased”, “lies”, or otherwise distorts truth, saying that they don’t believe anything. However, when encountering new information in The Influencing Machine, they simply accept it and don’t exercise the suspicion or skepticism that they claim to have towards ‘the media’. Gladstone peppers her history and facts with interpretation and opinion, but my students treat it all as information to be swallowed and regurgitated. 

I try to break them out with questions about Gladstone’s argument, what they found persuasive and why, what wasn’t persuasive, etc. But, I’m still working on trying to think of ways to have them really engage in ‘deep reading’ with the text. 



Comments

  1. Lucie BerjoanOctober 5, 2020 at 4:02 PM

    Conor, have you read Thomas Newkirk's The Art of Slow Reading? He emphasizes the importance of deep reading in a way that reminded me of the Bean text we just read for class. I think it's geared more towards secondary school, but honestly I think so much of it also applies to freshman students/ college students who never really took to English classes. I think you might like it! I love the idea of having a "how to read" class, and I think students benefit from hearing the strategies we more experienced readers utilize. I forget sometimes that it's not common sense and that it must be learned/ taught intentionally!

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    Replies
    1. ConorOctober 7, 2020 at 12:20 PM

      I haven't! I'll need to check it out, sounds worthwhile!

      Delete
  2. David KimeOctober 6, 2020 at 4:11 PM

    This is good to know regarding The Influencing Machine (I'll be teaching it as well, in a few weeks). Lately, in my class, we've been discussing how lying and privacy affect rhetoric, or rather how speakers lie and invade privacy as way to change minds. So, they are already engaging with this skepticism (as many of them have said outright, "You can't trust the media."). But I have also noticed that getting them to actually speak more and think critically and openly about the text at hand is challenging. I, too, am attempting to get them to think about how they might be (or might not be) persuaded, but when I get to that point, for many students, it seems like it's "too hard" or they have nothing to say about it. Bean does offer some useful suggestions that I've been mulling over... But, if you break through to your students in some way, I'd love to hear about it. And, if I find any luck, I'll do the same.

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