Reading to Write: an Exploration of the Uses of Analytic Reading to Teach Composition.

This study demonstrates through research and experimentation with freshmen students in college composition classes that analytic reading can help writers control the language conventions that good writers use to make their writing effective. Analytic reading is different from traditional reading in the composition class because it employs linguistic theory to examine the text features that specify how writing functions. An emphasis on speech alone cannot effect change in writing behavior because writing differs from speech in the kinds and number of text devices that define external context and provide internal cohesion. Text analysis shows that professional writers use convnetional features to signal referential relationships between parts of discourse. Heuristics for invention derived from the analysis of text can help novice writers to compose texts that create consistent yet multiple functional effects. Students come to recognize the functional implications of certain language choices through analytic reading; they learn to specify: (1) the language features in a text that are unusual because of their frequency or uniqueness, (2) the linguistic system or systems the features represent, (3) the communication elements of subject, author, audience and text codes which shape the text and (4) the author control over subject, audience and text codes that creates the text's functional focus. Students learn to control referential coherence in prose through directed paraphrase, summary and revision exercises which merge analytic reading and writing skills. Such activities teach students to manipulate the devices that (1) define clear beginnings, middles and endings, (2) establish parallel relationships between rhetorical, grammatical and information structure, (3) create cohesive ties across boundaries of grammatical and information structure and (4) relate propositions through embedding and subordinating devices. Through analytic examination of both small and large units of prose, students can use their experiences with language to discover heuristics for developing an idea in writing. Maxims, lines of argument, titles and message statements suggest logical development, designate an audience or imply a system of situational expectations that dictate prose development. Examination of their own free-writing can help students discover dependable strategies to help them project prose structure. In writing a planned composition, students can construct initial statements defining message, purpose and organizational pattern to help them recall, combine and imitate development schemes from written works with similar functional aims. Through comparing initial statements against subsequent compositions, students can identify matching text features and discover a direction for revision. A composition curriculum incorporating analytic reading is consistent with behaviorist learning theory and can help students learn to write better through developing text-structuring options. Although there is theoretical support for the use of analytic reading in the composition class, three factors may inhibit the success of this technique: (1) lack of transfer of language awareness to writing, (2) dominance of oral language habits or developmental immaturity and (3) influence of cognitive ordering strategies upon language learning. Nonetheless, analytic reading can be an effective tool in the composition class because it allows students to make inductive discoveries about written language that can improve their chances of controlling language structure as they write their own prose.Ph.D.LiteratureUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158039/1/8106079.pd