q&r#4

Adrian Badillo & Zalina Nazarova
Eng 1320/1301.158
9-22-10
Trang phan
Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning Christina Haas and Linda Flower. “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning”. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May, 1988), pp. 167-183.
This article is about the research that Christina Hass, and Linda flower conducted on
Reading strategies. The authors emphasized on three strategies that the students applied when
reading, which are the following: content, function/feature, and rhetorical. Content strategies
focus mainly on the “summery” of the reading, in other words to just figure out what the text is
saying, function/feature strategies focus not just on what the text is “saying” but also on what the
text is doing by figuring out the main idea that the article is trying to portray. Christina Hass and
Linda Flower assert that reading rhetorically is a far more complex process because besides
figuring out the main ideas and content of the text it goes beyond that and tries to figure out what
the purpose of the reading is.
Question:
Is Rhetorical reading a talent? Or can anyone just read rhetorically?
Rhetorical reading is extremely difficult this is why we don’t see ourselves using rhetorical
strategies in articles like the one we just read, because it is not a subject matter that is attractive
to us. Personally I like to read comics, and readings that concern technology, and Zalina does not
like to read at all.
We believe that that the majority of standard students use content strategies because they just
read to extract the knowledge that the article is portraying. Most of us don’t care what it says or
even think of it at all, they just use the strategies to find the point and get it over with.
We know that function/feature strategies is used by 20 percent of experienced readers which is
a higher percentage than rhetorical reading strategies in experience readers, who I think are
geniuses at English, I guess what we’re trying to say is that they are above average in thinking
capabilities.
Maybe you the reader can help us understand what the small percentage of people think, and
how they are able to read boring articles or boring books, and be able to use rhetorical strategies.
Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.