Students and Assigned Reading

Let me confess that in the early years of my undergraduate study I was not a conscientious reader. I, like many before and after me, was sure I could get by on what I picked up in class lectures. I wasn’t even ambitious enough to seek Cliff Notes, and, of course, in those bygone days the internet was just a glimmer in Al Gore’s eyes. And like everyone else making those choices, I was not fulfilling my potential. I liked to read; I always had done so, but structured, assigned reading after twelve years of schooling had lost most of its appeal. Apart from my psychology textbook, which I found interesting, very little called to me, and frankly the example of my peers only reinforced my habits because so few of us were reading. Then I ran into the hardliner who quizzed us on our assigned reading and I caved in and resumed the habit, and, hardly surprising, my grades improved. I also found my interest in reading returning.

Years later, as a teacher, I was expected to choose textbooks from which to assign my students reading and I knew that I wanted to quiz my literature students on their assignments rather than trusting them to read the material purely of their own volition. That was moderately successful, but as I saw little purpose in reading quizzes for composition textbooks, that is rhetorics and readers, I simply assigned the pages and crossed my fingers. I was disappointed, but not surprised, that very few of those students were reading the assigned material, and not all who did were understanding it well enough. Eventually I got into the habit of reviewing the chief points of each chapter and explaining the more abstract suggestions, which naturally from the students’ point of view eliminated the need to read the pages in the first place. Consequently, I began to pare down the amount of assigned reading and compensated by covering the same material in lecture with some discussion.

In recent years as I have both developed active learning practices and been asked to help develop core composition classes as a member of that committee for our department, I returned to incorporating textbooks and assigned reading as a regular feature in my composition classes, though I still doubted how faithfully students would read what I asked them to without either an immediate reward or punishment. However, using the simple group prompt model I had settled on in my literature classes, I have been pleasantly surprised by the appearance of completed homework. I say “appearance” because there are probably, on any given day, some students who have not done their reading, others who have only partially read or skimmed it, and perhaps a few who read it without understanding enough of what they read. And then being able to apply what they read to their own work is also still in question.

Nevertheless, what I see in my active learning approach is a great improvement over anything I’ve tried in the past. Each group is focusing on a different part of the chapter, they have each other’s support (for which the non-readers are grateful no doubt), and they are responsible for presenting the ideas initially into classroom discussion rather than me. Obviously it’s also an excellent opportunity to see where correction or elaboration is needed; if it’s needed at all. Most of these textbooks are already designed with questions and study suggestions, which, if they’re not already designed for collaborative work, can be easily modified to do so, and then, once I’ve read the material, creating the prompts to assign to each group through our online learning management system is fairly easy. To guess at what is working this time, I'd have to say it's a combination of the mutual support of the group and the evident purpose and application of the reading. What I’m anxious to see in the near future is more evidence that this is enhancing their academic performance. I can clearly see that reading and reading comprehension are generally increasing, though, and so I strongly suspect that better thinking and writing will result.