There is a growing consensus in our field that reading should be thought of as a constructive rather than as a receptive process: that "meaning" does not exist in a text but in readers and the representations they build. This constructive view of reading is being vigorously put forth, in different ways, by both literary theory and cognitive research. It is complemented by work in rhetoric which argues that reading is also a discourse act. That is, when readers construct meaning, they do so in the context of a discourse situation, which includes the writer of the original text, other readers, the rhetorical context for reading, and the history of the discourse. If reading really is this constructive, rhetorical process, it may both demand that we rethink how we teach college students to read texts and suggest useful parallels between the act of reading and the more intensively studied process of writing. However, our knowledge of how readers actually carry out this interpretive process with college-level expository texts is rather limited. And a process we can't describe may be hard to teach.
[1]
N. Spivey.
Construing constructivism: Reading research in the United States
,
1987
.
[2]
Interpretative acts: Cognition and the construction of discourse
,
1987
.
[3]
Robert J. Tierney,et al.
Toward a Composing Model of Reading.
,
1983
.
[4]
J. Hayes,et al.
Images, Plans, and Prose
,
1984
.
[5]
J. Bransford.
Human Cognition: Learning, Understanding and Remembering
,
1979
.
[6]
Sylvia Farnham-Diggory,et al.
Cognitive processes in education: A psychological preparation for teaching and curriculum development
,
1972
.
[7]
L. Flower.
The Construction of Purpose in Writing and Reading.
,
1988
.
[8]
Russell A. Hunt,et al.
Point-driven understanding: Pragmatic and cognitive dimensions of literary reading
,
1984
.
[9]
Christina Haas,et al.
'What did I just say?’ Reading problems in writing with the machine
,
1986
.