Wednesday, March 19, 2025
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Teaching Reading 

Reading is a primary way that we encounter new ideas and perspectives. Recently, several news sources, including the Chronicle, have suggested that students’ reading skills have notably declined, citing factors such as learning losses triggered by the shift to remote learning during the pandemic, a decrease in our ability to focus due to extended time on social media, and fewer people reading for pleasure in society at large. 

Reading, like writing, is such a standard part of coursework that we may not think to explain what we expect from students when we assign reading. What faculty mean by “reading,” though, may vary widely, depending on the disciplinary context and purpose. For instance, scientific articles, textbooks, poems, biographies, ethnographies, and theoretical articles may each call for different reading strategies. Even within a discipline, students may need to read differently, based on the task. For example, is your goal for assigning a particular reading depth or breadth? You may assign a scientific article so that students are introduced to a foundational study in the field, gain familiarity with the latest research, prepare to develop their own research question on the topic, or learn the conventions of academic argument in the discipline. If students are not aware of the specific expectation for the reading, they may not apply the appropriate strategy. Being explicit about why we have assigned specific readings and modeling critical reading strategies may help students to read and prepare for class more effectively. 

Explaining to students the value of engaging directly with the texts we assign is more important than ever now that AI can generate summaries of any text instantaneously. What should students take away from each reading?

Here are several considerations for helping students to read more effectively:

  • Clarify expectations. What should students be able to do to demonstrate that they have come to class “prepared” with the reading?
    • Consider the different ways you read in your discipline. Are you reading to familiarize yourself with the critical conversation on a topic, to respond to an argument, to learn a theoretical approach, to analyze a primary text, etc.? 
    • Is the goal breadth or depth? Should students skim purposefully (and if so, to what purpose?), or are they reading closely for deep comprehension? Both require focus, but the process will look different.
    • Note that the goals for a first reading could be different from that for a subsequent reading
  • If students are expected to read for specific information, let them know what to look for. For instance, Paschal Wallisch’s “How to Read a Scientific Article; the QDAFI Method of Structured Relevant Gist” (2020) offers a framework for reading scientific papers. QDAFI stands for:
    • What was the question the authors tried to answer?
    • What did the authors do to answer the question?
    • What was the author’s rationale?
    • What did the authors find?
    • What is the authors’ interpretation of these findings with regards to the initial question?
  • Normalize difficulty. Students may assume they are “doing it wrong” if they find the reading challenging. Share that even you, an expert, find the reading challenging, and explain how and why students should persist. 
  • Share information about the StAAR Center’s workshops and one-on-one consultations to help students read more effectively. 
  • Additional resources to scaffold reading assignments:

See Also Teaching with Writing & other Approaches to Teaching