Reading

At Grinnell and in this Tutorial, you will do a lot of reading. You are likely to find that you have significantly more reading than you did in high school and that your faculty have different expectations of what you derive from your reading. In particular, when you read argumentative writing, you will likely need to have a good understanding of not only the claims authors make, but also the structure of their arguments. (I don't teach literature courses, but my impression is that you need an even more detailed understanding of texts for those classes, since you will be often asked in class to find portions of those texts that correspond to claims you or your colleagues make.)

Preliminary Processes

Before you begin reading any work, you should consider what kind of work it is and what that means about how your faculty will expect you to have read the work. I tend to classify work as argumentative (the author has a point to make), informative (although there may be a point in the work, the primary goal is to convey factual information), and literary. In my classes, we focus on argumentative and informative works, so my process points also emphasize those kinds of works.

Before you begin reading, you should also have some resources available. These include highlighters (to highlight key passages), pencils (to take notes in the book or on paper), paper or notecards (for notes), and a dictionary (printed or electronic).

I recommend that before undertaking a thorough reading, you should do a more cursory reading of that work that work to identify some key issues.

• You should see if there are some terms that are used regularly that you do not understand (or that you do not understand sufficiently well). You should, of course, look up those terms in a dictionary. If you find that the dictionary definition fails to enlighten you, you should ask your faculty member or colleagues.
• For argumentative works, you should try to identify a likely thesis. In most cases, you will find the thesis in the opening section.
• You should also look consider the structure of the work. (At some point, you should ask yourself why the author chose to structure the work in that way.)

Reading Argumentative Writing

This section was written after a wonderful lecture by Sandy Goldberg on talking to students about reading. Note that Sandy often assigns better writers than I do, so not everything may apply in all readings.

How should you read the argumentative work (those with a strong thesis) for this class? Carefully, accurately, repeatedly, and thoughtfully.

You should read each work carefully. Most authors have placed considerable effort and care into their writing, precisely structuring their arguments. You owe it to yourself and to the author to make sure that you understand the argument.

You should read each work accurately. Strive to understand what the author intends at each place. Note that most authors of argumentative texts will use a number of forms to support their arguments. These include

• the claims that they intend to prove;
• the evidence that they intend to use to support those claims;
• possible objections to their claims (the best arguments acknowledge such objections and attempt to refute them);
• responses to those objections;
• a summary of the current argument (longer arguments require regular summaries);
• conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence.

I expect that you will eventually be able to classify each part of any writing I assign. That is, I may choose a section of the writing (e.g., a sentence or paragraph) and ask you whether it is a claim, evidence, objection, response, summary, or conclusion. You should also understand the relationship of that piece of text to the larger argument.

When possible, you should read each work repeatedly. Often, it is not possible to understand a serious work on the first (or second or third) reading. Through repeated readings, you familiarize yourself with the author's perspective, the structure of his or her argument, and the ideas he or she raises.

Finally, you should read each work thoughtfully. Once you begin to understand a work, you should begin to consider its implications. As you read, you are likely to develop questions.

Outcomes

When you are finished reading an argumentative work, I expect you to be able to do many things when talking about the work. You can probably tell many of them from the description above, but I've found that it doesn't hurt to remind students of my expectations. In particular, you should be able to:

• State the central thesis (claim, point) of the work.
  • In the exact words the author used to make the claim.
  • In your own words.
• State any auxiliary theses (claims, points) the author makes.
• Define all the words used in the work.

I also expect you to understand the form of the argument, although perhaps in a little less detail. Ideally, you should be able to

• Describe the structure of the author's argument.
• Identify the role each paragraph plays in the larger argument.
• Explain why each paragraph is included.
• Raise questions about the claim or the argument.

Unfortunately, not all authors have carefully structured their works, so you may find some aspects of these latter requirements more difficult. Do the best you can.