Author Archives: Ian Ross Singleton

Active Listening as Metaphor for Active Reading

Tricia asked me to post about this.

 

Using Diane Senechal’s definition of active listening, I suggest using this as a metaphor for reading. Active listening involves nonverbal gestures. What about reading? Underlines and highlights are nonverbal signs. Thinking of questions to ask the speaker to prompt further explanation can be questions for discussion in class. The pause an active listener gives after a speaker finishes can be reflection after the reading has ended.

An Assignment That WORKS

For the literacy narrative and since my theme is identity as text, I have them write a letter to somebody who has misidentified them. They have to correctly identify the one who incorrectly identified them. Then they have to describe how they were misidentified. Then they use a text to identify themselves. This text will be used later in genre analysis.

I’ve tried to make this as concrete as an assignment about identity can be. There has been a lot of success.

However, I’ve started to consider using the interview somehow to discuss concretely concepts such as rhetorical situation and audience. I’m considering changing this to an interview with themselves. They can speakinto their phones and use auto transcribe. This will help to teach revision since they’ll have to edit. They can also explore and discover different discourses by using the ways they talk to friends, at work, with kids, at places of worship, etc. when they talk about those rhetorical situations.