Dr. Howard, in his Viewpoints article “Speaking Out about Reading Aloud” (Fall 2003) expresses confusion about the activity of reading aloud. Whenever a faculty member assigns the activity as a learning lab assignment, he wonders what the possible purpose could be. He runs through a series of possibilities, but the upshot is that Dr. Howard cannot think of any purpose for reading aloud that makes sense to him. I believe that reading aloud is a very valuable learning activity, so I would like to offer a brief explanation of why I believe reading aloud is a very good practice.
The theory of education you hold almost decides for you which classroom practices seem worthwhile and which do not. I buy into the theory of education that sees its task as initiating students into the academic way of life. This presupposes that there is such a thing as an academic culture with its own ways of being, thinking and doing, and further this theory presupposes not only that our nontraditional students are not part of that culture, but that the academic culture is completely foreign to them.
Our students are unfamiliar with things that just seem ordinary to faculty, the kinds of things we think are important or the way we present our thoughts or ideas when speaking or writing, for example. When we write or speak, we do so in an academic style—a style that is recognizable and identifiable, a style that our students do not speak or write in. Those unfamiliar academic ways are what students must come to know and value.
Students never get to experience the beautiful and unique rhythms of academic speech and prose. They do not naturally use those patterns in their speech or their writing. Much of what they do read at the below college level is not fully in an academic style. What creates the wonderful rhythms is complex thought, and faculty struggle to select readings that are at an appropriate level that students could comprehend.
While faculty who take themselves to be initiating students into an academic culture teach in a below college level six credit reading and writing linked course are doing their best to help students as Bartholomae would put it, “reinvent the university”, it would be very helpful if students could spend time reading aloud together, becoming more comfortable and familiar with the academic style.
For an hour a week in Learning Lab, students could be freed from the task of reading comprehension and be given real academic texts where they can concentrate on making every sentence sound like the academic music that it is. Learning Lab seems to me to be one of the few opportunities, possibly the only opportunity, students may get to start to imitate and appreciate the sound of language of the community in which they are asking to take part.
For me, it is a very important matter that the purpose for my assigning reading aloud or any explanation close to it is not even raised on Dr. Howard’s list of possible explanations of why a faculty member might assign reading aloud as a lab activity. And I suspect that some of the purposes that other faculty have for assigning reading aloud also do not appear on the list. I am not being critical of Dr. Howard. My point is entirely different. The omission is entirely understandable and expected. We all have a tendency to think and act from within our own theoretical frameworks.
I suppose it is not a surprise that I am one of those instructors who indeed asks the Learning Lab faculty to have my students read aloud. Ideally I would like my students to read aloud for the entire semester, for all fourteen hours my students spend in lab. I have always found it surprising that, in general, the Learning Lab faculty do not respond well to this request. Often the Learning Lab faculty simply refuse to have my students read aloud.
As Developmental Education faculty, we have many conversations about our theories and practices—Tom Ott sees to that. Of course faculty have theoretical disagreements and disputes. Sharing our differences, discussing them and examining the implications of them are what keeps us growing and learning as faculty. It is what makes us academics and keeps us part of the larger academic conversation about teaching and learning.
But, since it is part of the ordinary way of academia for faculty to disagree, since it is not uncommon for Learning Lab faculty and classroom faculty to disagree about what might be the better teaching practices, I would suggest that refusing to engage in particular practices in lab classes is not the proper arena for our theoretical differences and disputes to be argued. Refusing to engage in any particular practice requested by classroom faculty because Learning Lab faculty don’t understand the purpose of the practice or don’t agree with it is wrong and harmful to our students and our academic community.
©Copyright 2004. Contact author for permission
Maintained by Jay Howard,Apr 2004