Q and R 2

Is the rhetorical reading strategy the most important and useful to construct meaning?

I believe this strategy is the most important and useful because it helps us to go beyond the text itself, to understand and analyze the author’s specific purpose, the context of the text, and the real effect it has on the audience it is addressed to. These aspects are so important because when you put them all together, you finally get to the construction of meaning and you also get to understand the sophisticated texts we are faced to in college; and that will be very significant for our education. This strategy also brings together the other two strategies, the content and function/feature strategies, which I think are also necessary but not completely. We have been taught to use the content and function strategies and this has not allowed us to work our minds to our full potential. We have been limited to develop our capabilities to their maximum by using those two strategies. And we have also limited ourselves because we do not go beyond of what we know we can go. The contents and function/feature strategies only help us to get the information of the text we read and that is it; you do not interpret nor find what the author really wants you to know; and you do not get affected by it either. The approach to reading of both strategies is somehow superficial and it limits the knowledge you have to create and acquire. I am not saying that they are not helpful, but when it comes to high-level texts, you need more than paraphrasing or knowing the features and function of a reading. But I believe that we have become passive readers; we get satisfied with little and certain information and we do not want to go beyond the superficial. And it is a shame that these two strategies are taught in high school because we, the students, get used to that limited expectation of ourselves and it is hard for us to construct the meaning of college-level texts. Thus, we find those texts so hard to understand and we get discouraged very soon. I think the rhetorical reading strategy should be taught a little bit more in depth in high school; I do understand that it might be somehow difficult, but it is the best for us as students to get ready for the sophisticated readings we are going to encounter during college and later on in our future. I myself sometimes get identified with those who read because it is a must and who are content and satisfied with getting only the superficial information; and I know it does not have to be like that. Some other times I read because I want to and I tried to deeply understand what the author’s purpose is and the effect he or she is going to have in the audience, and I know I have used the rhetorical reading strategy but in a very minimum way, not as it should be; I did not know I used it until I read the article of Hass and Flower. This article made me realize that there are good techniques to construct meaning when you read and to create knowledge from your readings, and that the most useful strategy would be rhetorical reading.