Rieman, fall 2013 Response to Reading Harvey and Daniels by Yueying Wu After youve completed the reading for

class, please thoughtfully answer the following questions !ype up your wor", print it out, and bring it to class We will use these to guide class discussion and I will take them up at the end of class. This work also counts as part of your final grade and will e used in your portfolio. !ou can write these up as essays, incorporating the "uestions into your piece. #r you can respond to each "uestion separately, making sure to make your answers more su stanti$e than a sentence. # Whats your rhetorical$critical reading of this piece% !hin" about who wrote it, to what audience, for what purpose, using what &moves 'language use, structure, organi(ation etc ) *upport why you thin" what you do +or e,ample, what ma"es you thin" its written for the audience you claim% %irst, I think this reading may come from a te&t ook ecause the structure is $ery similar to some of the readings in my te&t ooks. The main ideas are listed at the eginning of each chapter and there are some notes on the sides of the pages. 'nd unlike academic writings, the author uses lots of e&amples and simple sentences to make his idea $ery easy to understand. (econd, the )target* of this article is not students like us, ut teachers. I found some e$idence to support this idea+ Isnt it odd how rarely we teachers run across text this tough in our normal lives? [20] 'nd from the sentence Now if your inner voice is sighing !"hew# $o I have to teach all of those strategies %efore I can start &ids with in'uiry circles?[2(] I guess that the teachers who read this ook are most likely to teach children no higher than middle school. Third, in my opinion, the writer must e someone who has een a teacher for a long time so that he can ha$e enough e&perience to teach others. ,e uses in the reading lots of )we* which indicates that his -o is the same as that of his audience, teachers. .ast ut not least, the main purpose of this article is to illustrate the &ey com)rehension strategies that su))ort &ids to investigate their 'uestions get more information and infer %igger ideas as they read and investigate[*+], 2. Harvey and Daniels claim the following: the prime determinant of understanding is prior knowledge. Period, point blank, case closed !22". #espond to this claim, thinking about your own e$perience as a reader in different disciplines or as a newcomer to a topic. I can/t agree more. 's an 0(. 10nglish as a (econd .anguage2 learner, I find that knowledge, including encyclopedic knowledge, $oca ulary and grammar knowledge, and so on, is the most important factor in understanding an 0nglish essay. If the discipline or topic of an essay happens to be strange to me, or there are too many new words in it, I wont get what the author is talking about. Where did you do this reading% 'in your room% the library% etc ) What time of the day% Was it the same or different place and$or time as you read your last article for this class% Why or why not% What about the time and place helped or hindered your reading e,perience% (ince I did the last reading in the afternoon and it didn/t work out as well as e&pected, this time I decided to do the reading in the e$ening and also in the li rary. This time I felt much etter at understanding the writer/s ideas.
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In conclusion, e$ening time, accompanied y the atmosphere in the li rary, helped me a lot. I can concentrate etter in li rary and think more efficiently in e$ening. . /ist three words or concepts that you were previously unfamiliar with, define them, and state where you figured out their meaning 1120omprehension+ 't first I thought comprehension is similar to compare, ut after reading this article, I know that comprehension means )understand*. -"hen we teach com)rehension we are teaching for understanding[2.]2 1221roficient+ I looked up this word on the internet and it means )well ad$anced in an art, occupation, or ranch of knowledge*. 1www,merriam/we%ster,com0dictionary0)roficient2 1320ontinuum+ 3y reading the part )The 4omprehension 4ontinuum*, I figure out that it means )step y step* or something like that. 2 What personal e,periences can you relate to this te,t% When I was in high school preparing for my college entrance e&ams, the reading comprehensions we practiced were almost all a out finding details in the essay, e$en the "uestions a out the main idea were $ery detailed 1I/$e printed out an e&ample of our reading comprehension "uestions together with this response sheet and it/s on page 32. 't that time some teachers told us not to read the whole essay, ut to read the "uestions first and then locate in the essay the specific sentences which contain the answers in order to sa$e more time. This was our )comprehension strategies* and many students found it $ery )helpful*. ,owe$er, when I entered college and started to read te&t ooks in 0nglish, my pro lem arose that I focused too much on details like one word or one sentence to get the whole package. That/s when I found out that reading is not -ust understanding each word or phrase, ut communicating with the writer a out the ideas and applying them in the daily life. 3 What are your suggestions for how we may focus class discussion today% 4t may be offering a quote you found interesting or confusing and want to e,plore more 4t may be a concept you thin" we should tal" about 4t could be some tangential idea you want to tal" about 5r perhaps its some guiding question for the class to consider I appreciate the idea that )knowledge is oth a cause and a conse"uence of comprehension*. We can talk a out whether prior knowledge or comprehension strategies are more important when we are reading essays.