Samantha Martineau

Professor Cripps

English 110 I

1 October 2018

Reading Response Questions

  1. What Haas means in her opening statement is that to be considered at the college level of literate you need to be able to understand the text and respond back to the text. In the first part of Haas text she says that “Experts within scientific domains, then, draw upon rich representations of discourse as a social and rhetorical act, what Geisler (1991) has called socially configured mental models, as they create and interpret texts and as they judge the validity and usefulness of the information within them.” Haas in this text is saying that having a college level of literacy can help you reflect from a discourse and from a rhetorical act.
  2. The “‘myth’ of autonomous texts” that Haas discusses is “The educational task of helping students recognize the human nature of scientific activity and rhetorical nature of scientific texts may be part of a larger problem in academic literacy for students”. An autonomous text is a text that is independent, meaning that text can stand alone and support itself. Haas calls this a myth because it is not yet proven. A “‘myth’ of autonomous texts” is understandable to me in the text.
  3. Haas’ study of Eliza helps us understand what might happen to college students’ understanding of the text as they progress in a major by showing us the process over the four years. Haas shows us the growth of a student in college growing to a college level of literacy. In Haas observations of Eliza, she says that freshman and sophomore year Eliza read tests silently. While junior and senior year she observed sessions were not a separate data source but were collapsed into the reading and think-aloud protocols. These observations showed the change from the beginning of school for Eliza to the end. The progress that was suspected is proved with these observations by Haas.
  4. “Rhetorical frame” in terms of rhetorical reading is something that “helps readers account for the motives underlying textual acts and their outcomes.” Also according to Haas, the “Elements of the rhetorical frame include participants, their relationships and motives, and several layers of context.” This is something that students can learn when learning the college level of literacy.
  5. In Gee’s text, he discusses entering a new Discourse and his text can be associated with Haas text because in the observation made in the text they are discussing entering college. Entering college is an example of entering a new Discourse. For Eliza, she is entering a new Discourse and in that discourse she trying to figure out the college level of literacy. In Haas text, it says “beginning college students approach academic tasks as if they believe that texts are autonomous and context-free”. Entering college is the Discourse while the academic tasks are the costume and instructions for it. As Gee states “A Discourse is a sort of ‘identity kit’ which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write…”. These two texts connect with each other in the sense of entering a new Discourse and gaining the right tools for that Discourse.