Ways of Reading
Writing Intensive (WI) courses understand writing as thinking, and so include the promotion of better reading. WI courses aim to deepen engagement with texts, to encourage the student to think with the author as they read, to understand reading as a conversation between reader and writer, so as to create both meaning and possibilities for expression.
What has happened to deep reading, the experience of the fusion of writer with reader, during these pandemic years? How can WI courses find ways to help students read carefully, with critical and imaginative engagement, to develop and reconfigure their own understanding, as well as inform their own ability to write and persuade? How do we teach scholarly reading, deep reading, reading for pleasure, in an online world which often appears to discourage deep engagement?
As Dr Colette Gordon observes, Reading is less visible than writing. Although not less important, it is more often and more easily taken for granted. In universities, reading has historically been something that students do (if they do it) in isolation, outside of the classroom and out of sight of their lecturers and peers.
What is the role of reading in different disciplines? Can we create a culture of writing to read as well as reading to write?
This challenge will be considered by Dr Colette Gordon and Writing Fellow Ms Carrie Timlin who will discuss social reading and social annotation as a teaching tool in English Literature courses; by Dr Sarah Godsell in her teaching of history and considering the conditions necessary for deep reading; by Mr Fouad Asfour from his experience of establishing postgraduate writing groups which have generated transdisciplinary conversations about ways of writing and reading.