In the article, “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning”, Haas and Flower conducted a study in order to better understand the following two questions of the reading and writing process of college freshman in comparison to more advanced readers:
1) “How does this constructive [rhetorical reading] process play itself out in the actual, thinking process of reading?” (WAW 122)
2) “Are all readers really aware of or in control of the discourse act which current theories describe?” (WAW 122)
By the end of the article, Haas and Flower come to the conclusion that even though both student writers and advanced readers are able to understand the overall “meaning” of a text, it was realized rather more quickly by advanced readers. They also concluded that student writers focus more on writing about how content leads to the overall meaning; on the other hand, advanced writers focused more on the rhetorical situation the author must have been in in order to lead to the overall meaning of the text.
I found this article fairly interesting because I found myself comparing my own writing experiences with what the authors were claiming as I read through this article. In AP English, we were often assigned anagrams that were to help us have a basic understanding of all the things we could analyze in our essays so that we could convey the greater meaning of the text. I don’t exactly remember what any of these anagrams were but a majority of them involved identifying the speaker, the tone, rhetorical devices, connotation, etc. These anagrams however never really helped me that I am consciously aware of but I am unsure as to why I say this.
Another thing I realized while reading this is that it would have been a perfect article for my process analysis topic if I were to slightly change my topic. One problem I had while writing my process analysis was that there was not research specifically dealing with my topic. But, as I continued on through my paper, I realized that I don’t necessarily incompletely develop my thoughts while writing timed essays but also in general writing. This is one of several topics that Haas and Flower discuss in this article. They came to the conclusion that most student writers focus more solely on writing a summary of the content; on the other hand, however, advanced readers and writers were able to go more into how the rhetorical situation surrounding the author could have possibly led to the greater meaning. I really wish I had found this article while writing that essay!
Gennavieve Gray--WRIT 101 