“Who’s the target audience?” I’d ask in class, followed with an ominous, “And why does that matter?” Contemplating everything from a Harper’s essay to an early Lana Del Rey video, my Gen Z students propose: “It targets Gen Z,” even when that seems all but impossible.
G’Sell makes clear that she is not out to bash a younger generation or to argue that Google is making us stupid. Rather, she is here to explain what’s happening to students, and how she has adapted her teaching.
That resonated with me, as I did something similar in my recent story digging into the decline in students’ reading ability. If students aren’t doing the reading, experts told me, it’s often because they were never taught how to read effectively or at length. The reasons why include changes to the way reading is taught in K-12, a shift toward multimedia in and outside of the classroom, and a growing focus in high school on reading short passages and excerpts rather than entire books. As a result students more easily become confused or overwhelmed by college-level reading expectations.
G’Sell’s essay focuses on another dimension to this challenge. Because social media presents content without context, students have not had to think about who created it and when, who published it and why — or any of the other context clues that older adults learned to look for in the era before TikTok and Instagram.
I called G’Sell to learn more about how she helps her students take a more critical approach to what they read.
She noted that she is fortunate to teach small classes — her writing classes enroll a maximum of 12 students — and she teaches three courses a semester. As a result, she has been able to dive more deeply into these issues with her students and help them build the skills they need to succeed.
She has found, she said, that her students are often open with her about not knowing how to navigate, say, a library database or vet an online source. So every week she has students share an excerpt from a recent article. In addition to doing a stylistic analysis, the student presenter is expected to have researched the author and the publication.
“That’s something I get really big on,” she says. “As a writer and culture critic myself, I want my students to know that these are people. The essays you’re seeing online, the books you’re reading, anything you’re engaging with, it didn’t just appear. It’s by a person. And this person has flaws, this person has biases, and this person has a background.”
That emphasis on context also helps her counteract another trend she and her colleagues have noticed, which is a tendency for students to quickly dismiss someone whose ideas they disagree with as an idiot. While she wants her students to develop a healthy skepticism about what they read, she also encourages them to ask: to what extent do you agree or disagree with the author.
Another approach she takes in her teaching is modeling an active mind-set. When they’re reading something in class together, if she doesn’t know what a word means, she will ask: does anyone know? She will also take a guess before they look it up. “Sometimes I’m wrong,” she says. “Students can see, ‘Oh, look, my professor who is also a writer has to stop and look things up.’” The same is true with mistakes in pronunciation. She tries to convey that it’s normal to know a word on a page but not know how to speak it out loud. The bottom line, she says, is to convey “we’re all learning here.”
That said, G’Sell feels like she is fighting an uphill battle. “Every semester it becomes harder and harder than the semester before,” she says. “Ten years ago I might have had one student out of 36 who didn’t finish the course. Now it’s more like one out of 12.”
Administrators often don’t understand the challenges that writing instructors face, she says, which is one reason why she wrote the Chronicle essay. “They think it’s a lot of hand-wringing.”
She wishes colleges would place more emphasis on teaching writing. At her own institution students take a one-semester course that is supposed to cover college writing and reading comprehension, when, she says, they would really benefit from a second semester as well.
Inspiring students to read
In recent weeks I’ve written about some strategies professors are using to help build reading skills, such as using reading guides and reading out loud in class. These approaches, instructors report, enable students to focus on what’s important in the textbook chapter or article, and turn reading into an active learning exercise.
Kerry L. O’Grady, director of teaching excellence at Columbia University’s business school, shares a few more tips in a new Chronicle Advice piece. I want to highlight two points she makes that address how to select the readings for your course.
Reconsider your readings and explain your choices. Sometimes students don’t do the reading because it doesn’t seem relevant or interesting. O’Grady suggests carefully reviewing your course readings with an eye toward things like length and accessibility. “Only select readings that help achieve the learning outcomes and objectives you’ve listed on your syllabus. If a certain text is particularly dense, long, outdated, or expensive, think about jettisoning it.” Similarly, she writes, talk to your students about why the readings are valuable and how you will hold them accountable for doing the work.
Give students options. That doesn’t mean giving students total control, but allowing them to select among a few choices stimulates motivation, O’Grady notes. “For the readings you select, help students make connections. Ask them to debate passages, synthesize key themes, or write essays reflecting on the relevance of the text to their future careers or lives. In writing assignments or class discussions, have students share personal experiences illuminated by the text.”
I’m going to continue to write about the challenges facing faculty members when it comes to teaching critical-reading skills. If you have developed strategies that work for you, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your ideas may appear in a future newsletter. And if you have questions about a particular reading challenge you’ve noticed, please also write in and I can share them with teaching experts to see if they have any ideas for you.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
- Beth
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