1. Why Johnny Thinks He Can’t Read: Student Perspectives of Reading Difficulties By Maureen McBride, PhD and Meghan Sweeney University of Nevada, Reno

2. Reading in the Composition Class Salvatori and Donahue: revisionist history of composition ▫1980s: Reader-response theory: “Thanks to reader, texts snap into life.” ▫1990s: Rise of Basic Writing concerns pushes reader-response theory, and reading, to the background ▫Archival research: 17 years of CCCCs programs find reading invisible

3. New Course Cluster: 5 units, 3 classes Writing Critical Reading Editing for Style

4. Critical Reading Course Outcomes: Build ability to read complex, academic texts efficiently and with understanding of context, form, and content. Interpret, analyze, discuss, and evaluate a variety of readings; Understand how academic communities make and share knowledge through scholarly genres and stylistic conventions; Develop standards of "good writing" by which they can evaluate their own and classmates' essays; Build facility in writing summary, paraphrase, synthesis, and analysis.

5. Salvatori’s Difficulty Paper Writing about what students find difficult when reading Gives teachers: better understanding of student perspective Gives students: agency Helps us avoid the “Great Divide” theory of literacy

6. Our research study Difficulty paper collection over three semesters: Over 200 papers Difficulty paper prompt: In an essay, summarize this week’s article then describe the difficulties you encounter with the article and techniques you used to get past the difficulty. Method: Grounded Theory

7. Sample difficulty papers What are the difficulties these students are identifying? What do these difficulties mean for the students’ ability to read critically or question texts? What do these difficulties mean for our teaching of reading and/or writing in high school or college?

8. Core Categories Identified Intrinsically vs. extrinsically motivated Personal vs. institutional identity Rejecting reader agency Identity

9. Intrinsically or extrinsically motivated One student wrote that she doesn’t “have a good imagination so [she doesn’t] like to read about things that really wouldn’t go on or things I won’t ever have to deal with in my lifetime.” “I would classify myself as a person who doesn’t read for enjoyment. I will only read if I am asked to read something. I cannot pick up a book just for the fun of reading it...I used to be able to read for fun, but not anymore.”

10. Personal vs. institutional identity “Most students read articles given to us by our teachers for a grade; simply to get through it and nothing more. We don’t want to read these long and seemingly pointless stories for fun, and that is why many of us have a hard time getting the full meaning out of a piece of text.” “Among those difficulties having an overall thought that this project could be a waste of time remains throughout the duration.”

11. Rejecting Reader Agency “If a person who’s studying medicine or a doctor reads this article, I think they wouldn’t have any problems understanding it. But because I don’t know all of these medical terms, some of the things she said were hard to understand.” Throughout the story, I felt disconnected about what the author was trying to say or what his purpose of this story was. The only thing I understood was thatconnect to the author and their purpose if you do not f they would kill infant babies and eat them because they were running low on food...It is hard to fully agree with what they are trying to say.”

12. Core Category Identified Lack of schema Writing instruction mismatch Passive reading is academic Expectations

13. Lack of Schema “One thing is that I hardly know anything about the political world. In Palin’s speech she mentioned a few things that only people who knew politics would understand.” “They talked about ‘The New Deal’ and LBJ’s Great Society. I had no clue what they were talking about.”

14. Writing Instruction Mismatch “This part of the article [Michael Vick’s dogfighting] would have correlated well with the first paragraph and story of this article but it does not make sense to put this type of information in with the rest of the article. Granted, it is about football and the effects of it but the author is bouncing around topics and stories, making it hard as the reader to follow characters and timelines.”

15. Writing Instruction Mismatch (cont.) “Lastly, one thing that bugged me was when I was reading this I kept thinking that some form of conclusion will pop up, and they will finally decide on what their commercial will be about. But as I read, nothing was decided...Nothing was ever stated in the dialogue, and it made it pretty confusing, making me think I missed something.”

16. Passive Reading is Academic “This essay was a seventeen page, informative essay that was jammed packed full of history, evidence, quotes, and facts...If an essay doesn’t catch my attention within the first couple sentences or within the first paragraph, I can usually tell that I am going to struggle through it.” Many of us have heard of this issue more than once in our lifetime and I felt like I was reading but not learning anything new. To me reading something without getting something new out of it is boring to read.”

17. Passive Reading is Academic “She talks about reading a magazine before she goes to bed; she has put in a lot of really non useful information in this story that I think detracts the reader.”

18. Connections to CCSS Many discussions about “cold reading” Our research indicates that students need practice ▫activating schema ▫developing, choosing, and using reading strategies ▫understanding reading as a process

19. Reading & Writing Connections Reading and writing must both be taught ▫Not just assigned Students need scaffolding to effectively approach a “cold” reading Identifying difficulties allows students to address and move beyond to a deeper understanding