LOCATING READING INCOMPOSITION STUDIES

"[W]hat an instructor believes about reading is an essentialprecondition to organizing and teaching in a writing classroom."—Marguerite Helmers (2003, 4)

David and Diana could not have been more different as highschool students: David struggled in many of his classes, especiallywhen it came to reading. He passed with average grades,and he had to work to achieve those average grades. In classesthat involved reading, David was quiet and lacked confidence.As David put it, "I'm bad at reading. I don't know if I need morevocabulary or a speed reading course, but I don't like it, andI'm not good at it. Others [read] faster and get more out of itthan I do." Diana, on the other hand, excelled at reading andin her classes in general. She often participated in class, confidentthat she knew the material and knew the right things to say.According to Diana, "School's not that hard. I'm busy, and I'vegot a lot of homework, but I do fine. I have a lot to read, but Ijust do it." For Diana, school was not a matter of struggling toget by but of striving to maintain a level of excellence.

In college, David struggled even more with reading, andDiana found that her usual ways of reading did not work anymore,noting that "they [teachers] expect us to do differentthings in different classes with reading." Although Dianaremained a good student, she felt frustrated by these unclearexpectations and her lack of preparation; she didn't struggle,but she didn't know how to excel. These two students suggestthe range of students that come into our first-year composition(FYC) courses: the struggling students, uncertain and quiet asthe class discusses a reading, stumbling over a word or evendrifting off as they try to make a point; and the above averagestudents, those who seem confident but end up skimming thesurface of a reading for "the point" and do not see it as a complex,layered event. The students in this study went to a highschool that performed exceptionally well on state tests; it washeld in high esteem by parents, teachers, and students. If thesestudents experienced difficulty with reading in college, thenwhat does that suggest about the place and purpose of readingpedagogy? For far too long, reading pedagogy has beenaimed at students like David, those who struggle, those whomight need remedial education. But what about Diana andher overachieving peers? What about the students who seemto read well, but lack flexible strategies or an appropriate criticalstance? How might we pursue research and pedagogy thatwould benefit a range of students? And, most importantly, whatpedagogical possibilities are we overlooking by not investigatingreading at a time when reading has so many rich manifestations?In their statements that opened this chapter, David andDiana referred to their proficiencies with traditional print literaciesin high school and college. As we will see throughoutthe book, the participants generally viewed digital literacies asnon-school practices. Might David have been more confident asan academic reader if his experience with digital texts had beendrawn upon? How might have Diana and David engaged theirreading and writing practices in richer, more connected ways inschool through exposure to a range of literacies?

This chapter examines composition's relationship to reading.Although literacy studies has shaped compositionists'approach to writing instruction, it has made less of an impact onour thinking about reading in the writing classroom. Readingpedagogy, however, is crucial to the work of writing instruction.As Marguerite Helmers (2003) observes, "what an instructorbelieves about reading is an essential precondition to organizingand teaching in a writing classroom" (4). The beliefs wehave about reading, and the view we have of our discipline'srelationship to reading, shape what we do with reading (andwriting) in the classroom. As reading and writing take on moreshapes and purposes—as they accumulate—in the twenty-firstcentury, how prepared are we to engage new literacies if weleave reading in its largely invisible state?

READING'S PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

Consider the curious double life of reading in compositionclassrooms. All at once, reading is both invisible and constantlypresent. It seems to constitute so much of what we do in theclassroom, yet it may also be one of the least theorized partsof classroom practice. We see reading most when it goes awry:when students stumble over words, when they offer up an interpretationthat makes us wonder if we're all reading the samething, when they read for the quick answer instead of the deepconnection, when they simplify an author's position. But, forthe most part, reading leaves no trace—no drafts, no revisions,no peer review, no individual conferences. When it seems to gowell—or at least when it doesn't derail the goal of teaching writing—itdrifts into the background, a ghost of a concern.

Reading's simultaneous presence and absence can be seenin Pat Hoy's (2009) description of how he used to teach readingand why that changed. Hoy states that he had "developed apedagogy that would not require [him] to teach students howto read" (305). That is, students learned particular ways of readingthrough assignments and exercises, not from a more directform of instruction. When that pedagogy was successful, he was"left free to teach writing, not reading" (305). But in recentyears, Hoy's students were not reading the way he expected, andhe found he was not alone: other teachers in his program allagreed on the "pervasive" reading problem and its characteristics(305). I think Hoy's initial view echoes what many compositionteachers desire: students should either "already know howto read" or learn how to read for college as a byproduct of otherassignments through a kind of pedagogical osmosis. We expectcertain kinds of reading in our classes, and we want that readingto be invisible, automatic, and ready to serve writing. Whenreading becomes visible, when it requires new scaffolding, thenthe reading-writing balance of the classroom is upset.

Hoy and his colleagues are certainly not alone in feelingdissatisfied and even frustrated with student reading. In theiranalysis of students' writing from sources, Rebecca MooreHoward, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue (2010) foundthat students seemed to engage minimally with sources. Basedon the students' lack of summary and their focus on individualsentences from sources, the researchers raise questions aboutstudents' reading practices and "ask not only whether the writersunderstood the source itself but also whether they even readit" (186). As they note, their "preliminary inquiry suggests thatwe have much more to learn" about how students read and usesources (189). The research by Howard, Serviss, and Rodrigueis an early stage of The Citation Project, a large-scale empiricalstudy of how students at multiple schools use...