What Does the Process of Close Reading Help a Reader Do?
Shut Reading: A Definition
pastGrant Wiggins, Ed.D, Accurate Pedagogy
On May 26, 2015, Grant Wiggins passed away. Grant was tremendously influential on TeachThought'due south approach to education, and we were lucky enough for him to contribute his content to our site. Occasionally, we are going to go back and re-share his most memorable posts. So today and tomorrow we're going to share two of his posts on literacy, starting with what it means to 'close read.' Per his usual, Grant took a deep dive on the topic, with lots of great examples.
What is close reading? Equally I said in my previous blog mail service, whatever it is information technology differs from a personal response to the text.
Here is what the Common Cadre ELA Standards say:
Students who come across the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the center of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. (p. 3)
What Is The Significant Of Close Reading?
Here is Anchor Standard 1:
Fundamental Ideas and Details
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual bear witness when writing or speaking to support conclusions fatigued from the text. (p. 10)
Here is how Nancy Boyles in an excellentEducational Leadership article defines information technology: "Substantially, close reading ways reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension."
Thus, what "shut reading" really means in do is disciplined re-reading of inherently complex and worthy texts. Every bit Tim Shanahan puts it, "Considering challenging texts do not surrender their meanings easily, it is essential that readers re-read such texts," while noting that "non all texts are worth close reading."
The close = re-read + worthy assumption here is critical: we assume that a rich text simply cannot be understood and appreciated by a single read, no matter how skilled and motivated the reader.
The next five ELA ballast standards brand this clearer: we could not possibly analyze these varied aspects of the text simultaneously:
- 2. Determine fundamental ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the cardinal supporting details and ideas.
- three. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
- 4. Interpret words and phrases equally they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
- 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
- 6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and way of a text.
College readiness and close reading.Since a central rationale for the Mutual Core Standards is college readiness, allow'due south have a look at how college professors define it. Here is what Penn State professor Sophia McClennen says at the beginning of her extremely helpful resource with tips on close reading:
"Reading closely" means developing a deep understanding and a precise interpretation of a literary passage that is based beginning and foremost on the words themselves. Only a shut reading does not end at that place; rather, it embraces larger themes and ideas evoked and/or implied by the passage itself.
What Is The Goal Of Close Reading?
Here is how the Harvard Writing Center defines it:
When yous close read, you lot observe facts and details most the text. Yous may focus on a particular passage, or on the text equally a whole. Your aim may be to notice all striking features of the text, including rhetorical features, structural elements, cultural references; or, your aim may be to notice only selected features of the text—for instance, oppositions and correspondences, or detail historical references. Either way, making these observations constitutes the get-go pace in the process of shut reading.
The second step is interpreting your observations. What we're basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, every bit with inductive reasoning, shut reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add together upwardly to.
A University of Washington handout for students summarizes the aim of close reading as follows:
The goal of any close reading is the following:
- an ability to empathise the general content of a text fifty-fifty when you don't sympathize every give-and-take or concept in it.
- an ability to spot techniques that writers utilize to get their ideas and feelings across and to explain how they piece of work.
- an power to judge whether techniques the writer has used to succeed or neglect and an power to compare and contrast the successes and failures of different writers' techniques.
Recall—when doing a close reading, the goal is to closely analyze the material and explain why details are significant. Therefore, close reading does not try to summarize the writer's main points, rather, it focuses on 'picking apart' and closely looking at the what the author makes his/her argument, why is information technology interesting, etc.
What Are Some Examples Of Close Reading Questions?
Here are a few of the helpful questions to consider in shut reading, from the handout by Kip Wheeler, a college English professor:
II. Vocabulary and Diction:
- How exercise the important words relate to one some other? Does a phrase here appear elsewhere in the story or poem?
- Do any words seem oddly used to yous? Why? Is that a effect of archaic linguistic communication? Or deliberate weirdness?
- Do whatsoever words have double meanings? Triple meanings? What are all the possible ways to read it?
III. Discerning Patterns:
- How does this pattern fit into the blueprint of the book as a whole?
- How could this passage symbolize something in the entire work? Could this passage serve as a microcosm, a footling picture, of what'south taking place in the whole narrative or poem?
- What is the sentence rhythm like? Brusque and choppy? Long and flowing? Does it build on itself or stay at an fifty-fifty pace? How does that structure chronicle to the content?
- Can y'all place paradoxes in the author's thought or discipline?
- What is left out or silenced? What would yous expect the author to say that the author seems to have avoided or ignored? What could the author have done differently—and what'due south the effect of the current choice?
Of notation is that in all these college examples the focus is on close reading as a prelude to writing. This is an important heads-upwardly for students: close reading invariably is a means to an terminate in higher, where the aim is a advisedly-argued work of original idea about the text(s). And, in fact, the second part of Ballast Standard #1 makes this link explicit: the expectation is that students will communicate the fruits of their shut reading to others in written and oral forms.
Close Reading vs. Reader Response
A key supposition implicit in all these quotes also equally in the Common Core – a controversial one, possibly – is thus what I briefly argued in the previous post: 'shut reading' has implicit priority over 'reader response' views of the aim of literacy instruction. The reader'southward primary obligation is to sympathise the text. That emphasis is clear from the anchor standards in the Mutual Core, as noted above: the goal is to understand what the author is doing and accomplishing, and what it ways; the goal is not to respond personally to what the author is doing.
As I noted in my previous mail, this does not mean, however, that we should ignore or try to featherbed the reader's responses, prior knowledge, or interests. On the reverse, reading cannot assistance but involve an inter-mingling of our experience and what the writer says and perhaps means. Only it does non follow from this fact that instruction should give equal weight to personal reactions to a text when the goal is shut reading. On the contrary: nosotros must constantly be alarm to how and where our own prejudices (literally, pre-judging) may be interfering with meaning-making of the text.
Here is how the caution is bandage in a college handout (ed note: the link is now broken and removed) on close reading for students:
1 discussion of circumspection: context needs to be examined with intendance. Don't assume that the context of your own class or gender or culture is informing you lot correctly. Read context equally actively and equally rigorously as you read text!
This is especially true when reading rich, unusual, and controversial writings. Our job is to suspend judgment as nosotros read – and be wary of projecting our own prior experience.
Permit me offer i of my favorite sections of text to illustrate the point – ii early on sections from Nietzsche'sAcross Adept and Evil:
SUPPOSING that Truth is a adult female–what then? Is there not basis for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they accept been dogmatists, have failed to empathise women–that the terrible seriousness and impuissant importunity with which they take usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a adult female?…
5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are–how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how kittenish and childlike they are,–only that at that place is non enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a common cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is more often than not their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do non wish to be regarded every bit such, more often than not astute defenders, too, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"–and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far every bit to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.
This is aarchetype close reading claiming: one has to read and re-read to make sense of things – even though all the words are familiar. And ane has to put many prejudices and associations aside – nearly august philosophers, virtually scholarship, nigh "reason," about truth and our motives in seeking information technology, almost manhood! – to understand and capeesh what Nietzsche is driving at.
Examples Of Close Reading Questions
Oh, c'mon Grant: I teach picayune kids! No thing. The same shut reading needs to be done with every Frog and Toad story. Let'southward consider my favorite, "Spring." Frog wants Toad to wake up from hibernation to play on a nice Apr spring twenty-four hour period. Toad resists all entreaties to wake up and play. The climax of the story comes here:
"But, Toad," cried Frog, "y'all will miss all the fun!"
"Mind, Frog" said Toad. "How long have I been comatose?"
"You accept been asleep since November," said Frog.
"Well then," said Toad, "a little more slumber will not injure me. Come up back again and wake me upward at about half past May. Proficient nighttime, Frog."
"But, Toad,' said Frog, "I will exist alone until then."
Toad did not answer. He had fallen asleep.
Frog looked at Toad's calendar. The November page was yet on top.
Frog tore off the November page.
He tore off the Dec page.
And the January page, the February page, and the March page.
He came to the April page. Frog tore off the April page too.
Then Frog ran back to Toad'due south bed. "Toad, Toad, wake up. It is May now."
"What?" said Toad. "Can it exist May so soon?
"Yes," said Frog. "Look at your agenda."
Toad looked at the calendar. The May page was on top.
"Why, itis May!" said Toad as he climbed out of bed.
So he and Frog ran outside to meet how the world was looking in the Spring.
All sorts of interesting questions can re-raised here – all of which need a shut (re-) reading:
- Why did Frog try to wake Toad? How selfish or selfless was he being?
- How did Frog eventually go Toad to get up? Why did he do that (i.eastward. trick him)?
- Why didn't the other attempts piece of work to rouse Toad?
- What convinced Toad? Why did it convince him?
- Is Frog existence a good friend here? Is Toad? (The title of the book, of course, is Frog and Toad Are Friends).
Notice that we could inquire the following reader-response-like questions:
A. Have yous ever been tricked like that, or tricked someone else? Why did y'all play a trick on them or they trick you?
B. Do existent friends pull a fast one on friends? Is Frog really being a practiced friend here?
From my vantage point, however, in light of what nosotros have said so far, the first question pair is less fruitful to consider – less 'shut' – than the 2d pair. The showtime pair takes y'all away from the text; the 2d pair takes yous correct back to the text for a closer read.
The Openness Required In Shut Reading
Close reading, and so, requires openness to existence taught. Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren in their seminal textHow To Read A Book make this issue of openness quite explicit at the showtime. When the goal is understanding (instead of enjoyment or information merely), we must assume that at that place is something the writer grasps that we do non:
The writer is communicating something that can increase the reader'south understanding… What are the conditions nether which this kind of reading – reading for understanding –takes place? There are 2. First, at that place is an initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be "superior" to the reader in understanding…second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree…To the extent that this equality is approached, clarity of advice is achieved.
In brusk, nosotros can simply acquire from our "betters." We must know who they are and how to acquire from them. The person who possesses this sort of knowledge possesses the art of reading.
The essence of such open reading is active questioning of the text. As the authors say, the "ane elementary prescription is… Ask questions while you read – questions that yous yourself must endeavor to respond in the form of reading."
Here are the 4 questions at the heart of the book:
What is the volume virtually equally a whole? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way…
What is beingness said in detail, and how? You must try to notice the primary ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author's particular message.
Is the book true, in whole or in part? You cannot respond this question until you accept answered the starting time ii. Yous have to know what is beingness said before you can decide whether information technology is true or not. When you understand a book, however, you are obligated to brand up your ain mind. Knowing the author'south mind is not enough.
What of information technology? If the book has given y'all information, yous must ask nigh its significance. Why does the author call up information technology is important to know these things? Is it important to you lot to know them?
Note the caution: yous shouldn't jump to judging the merit or significance of the work earlier agreement information technology – a maxim of close reading.
The bulk of the book describes dozens of applied tips, with examples, for how to comment texts and develop amend habits of active reading in pursuit of the answers to these reader questions. I tin heartily recommendHow To Read a Book as one the all-time resources ever written for learning close reading. Difficult to debate with the facts: written in 1940 and a longtime all-time-seller, it has had over 30 printings and is all the same used today.
Most importantly, to yours truly,How To Read a Book taught me how to read properly. It was in a brief skim of Adler's book, while lounging in a friend's dorm room when I was a junior at St. John'south Higher – the Slap-up Books school – that I realized with a terrible shock that I had never really learned how to read actively and advisedly upwardly until that moment. The book changed my life: I became more than skilled, confident, and willing equally a reader; I went into education in part motivated by the simple yet powerful lessons taught me most the joys of reading and thinking in the volume.
What St. John'southward also taught me is the ability of and so-called Socratic Seminar – the way all of our classes were run – for learning close reading. Indeed, that's all a expert seminar is: a shared close reading of a circuitous text in which students propose emerging understandings, supported by textual bear witness, with occasional reminders and re-direction by teacher-facilitators.
So, ELA and English teachers – and history, math, fine art, and science teachers too: allow's teach kids the joys that come from discerning the richness in a swell text, be information technology Frog and Toad, Plato's Amends, Euclid's Elements, or Picasso'south Guernica. I think you'll be surprised how much a wise text can teach and accomplish even the almost unruly kid – and, in the end, make them feel wiser, too.
This post commencement appeared on Grant's personal weblog; image attribution flickr users katerha and deepcwind
Source: https://www.teachthought.com/literacy/what-close-reading-actually-means/