Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Studying the “Reading Transition” from High School to College: What Are Our Students Reading and Why?

I enjoyed this article for several reasons. First it was interesting to see what students classified as reading, whether academic or nonacademic. Second I liked the in depth questions the students were assigned in their journaling. I was not surprised, that even though they were paid, they did not keep an updated journal. My guess “shiny objects” distracted them. Nor was I surprised that most students did not make a connection from text to text or text to world. At this age their world tends to have a pretty narrow focus, combined with the fact that many students do not find texts in school relevant to their lives. As the GA for the Gen Ed program, I sat in on a few first-year student seminars.  Professors discussed how to show students that their classes relate to another, as well as to the world outside of academia.  During their discussions several of the professors decided to create a “theme teaching curriculum” thereby reinforcing the cross relationships.

                David Jolliffe and Allison Hart addressed this possibility in their “suggested three avenues” approach. In particular the second avenue stated that, “faculty members and administrators need to create curriculums, co-curriculums, and extra-curriculums that invite students to engage in their reading and to connect texts that they read to their lives, their worlds, and other texts” (613).  Jolliffe and Hart also stated that there was room for “learning-community programs—in which students are taking two or three courses together, focusing on a common theme—foster this kind of curricular connectivity . . .” (613, 614). EMU has this type of program in place for first-year students. The Gen Ed program in conjunction with “Residential Life” created a grouping of three classes with a theme, which is reinforced and supplemented in the resident halls and apartments. New this fall are several classes offering the same theme as the tri classes with the intent of making connections between classes, dorm life, and outside activities. The goal is to create a cohesive experience with students, professors, and EMU life in order to help students stay focused on their four year program. A program that helps students see the relevance of their learning, as well as how classes combine and build upon one another. Students need to be able to see “beyond the grade” in order to inter-relate their courses, hopefully this program will accomplish these goals.

I find that Kathleen Yancey’s article “Literacy Demands of Entering the University” dovetails well with Jolliffe’s and Harl’s article. She states that there are three basic ways of testing incoming freshmen’s literacy levels, which are Advanced Placement (AP) testing, dual enrollment, and self-assessment testing. She goes on to say that these testing methods have some very real issues when assessing critical and rhetorical literacy levels of incoming freshman. The students who score a 3 on the AP exam tend to struggle when taking sophomore courses. Statistics show that those students that “dual enrolled failed a timed writing task at a third higher rate than those students who completed composition on campus” (259).

The self-assessment method that students (EMU’s method of testing incoming freshman) can take before entering college leads to issues because the questions are too vague and do not allow students to truly assess their ability compared to the expectations of the college. This method in particular creates a gap of knowledge and ability between students in a mainstream composition course. The gap between students’ writing skills and what is required by the college they attend is directly related to their ability to relate from text to text and text to world. If students do not relate to a text or text to world how will they articulate their thoughts on the subjects in the texts, and if they do not have the skills to articulate their thoughts in writing how are they going to learn to make the association from text to the world?