An Introduction to Reading Texts

Good writers of texts are good readers of texts—all kinds of texts from written texts (like books and articles) to visual texts (like photographs and illustrations) and even to include such “texts” as observing human behavior (like facial expressions and body language).

Whether they are reading a book or reading a room, good writers pay attention and notice things. They take note of what is going on around them as well as in their own minds and bodies. It could be said that good writers are always doing research in this way; this is where their ideas and their insights come from, how they have something to say.

Reading is an active, not passive task. In the article “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning,” Christina Haas and Linda Flower claim 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” (167). They further that “reading is also a discourse act” and “readers construct meaning. . .in the context of a discourse situation, which includes the writer of the original text, other readers, rhetorical context for the reading, and the history of the discourse” (167). What Haas and Flower are saying is that a text doesn’t mean anything on its own; it holds meaning only through being “read” by readers. Reading and writing are linked; therefore, it’s important to learn to read texts as writers read them.

Watch this brief video, which is the trailer or teaser for a PBS Frontline documentary episode based on Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal, a critique of how modern medicine handles death and dying. As you watch, consider the following questions:

Why does Gawande say he writes?

How can you tell he is a good writer—that he pays attention and notices things?

What kinds of research can you tell Gawande draws on in his book? How do you know this?

As you probably realized Gawande draws on both primary and secondary source research to study and write about the topic for his book. Although this varies somewhat among academic fields or disciplines, one way to think of primary research is that it’s acquired first-hand; it’s data and information that we collect for ourselves. Secondary source research comes to us second-hand; someone else collects the data and information and we read the report they wrote based on their findings. Such secondary sources present information that has been edited and often include the writer’s analysis or argument based on the information (for more see Chapter 4).

Let’s consider Gawande’s sources—the “texts” of the research he conducted for his book:

Primary: Case study examples from patients he treated as a physician, interviews he conducted, personal experiences he had with his family, observations at other hospitals and long-term care facilities

Secondary: Scholarly research reports and studies, newspaper and magazine articles

Certainly, in preparation for writing the book, Gawande read all of these various “texts” and sources carefully to figure out what to say about the topic. While doing all of this primary and secondary source research—operating on patients, attending appointments with his father, visiting other facilities and interviewing people, as well as reading lots of books and articles—did he just keep all of the information in his head? When he sat down at his computer to begin drafting the book, did he rely on only his memory to both know what to write about and how (and where)?

Of course not. He wrote all of his observations down in copious notebooks. In that video clip, did you notice all of the composition notebooks he had? Did you see all of those sticky notes, too—what do you think those were for? So, not only is Gawande a critical reader of texts and a keen observer; he is also an expert notetaker. He writes down what he reads, sees, and experiences, as well as what he’s thinking about. I wonder if he brought his notebooks into the doctor appointments with his father. What effect might it have on such primary research to be writing down what people say while you are meeting and talking with them? Or, maybe after each appointment he jotted down everything he remembered when he got in his car, or maybe later that night before he went to bed. Then, in the coming days, months, even years, I imagine he read and re-read his notes, adding additional memories, insights, thoughts, and questions. As he began drafting the book chapters he probably added more notes (maybe the sticky notes) about where to place certain information.

Whether you are reading a book (secondary source) or reading a room or interviewing a person (primary research), you’ll want to do so with a pen in hand and be taking notes. If you don’t already, carry with you everywhere you go a writer’s notebook.

Using a Writer’s Notebook

A term for the readers (or listeners or viewers) of texts is the audience, and as you know, the meaning of a text is constructed or made in part by the audience (read more about what’s called rhetoric in Chapter 2). Covino and Jolliffe call “readers and listeners who attend to and interpret a text auditors” (6). They explain that such auditors of texts “see ‘truth’ neither as something that exists in their own minds before communication nor as something that exists in the world of empirical observation that they must simply report ‘objectively’”:

Instead, rhetorical truth is something achieved transactionally among the rhetor [author or speaker] and the auditors whenever they come to some shared understanding, knowledge, or belief. As coparticipants in a verbal exchange, all the parties involved are knowledge-makers. (Covino and Jolliffe 7)

Writers, therefore, do not simply find information about a topic. Writers need to explore ways of knowing about any given subject or topic. As author Robin Hemley writes in the book Now Write! edited by Sherry Ellis, “Best to understand that we are not tape recorders or cameras, and the goal of our writing is not to transcribe but to filter the world in the way that humans filter the world through their very subjective minds” (10). In the same collection, author Robert Root adds, “Writing isn’t simply transcribing thought; writing taps involuntarily into memory and imagination to provoke language that generates thought” (30). Therefore, writing “is a means of discovery” (30).

As readers of all kinds of texts, writers benefit from using tools to essentially audit their own minds, their own thinking about what they are studying and preparing to write about. In her book The Making of Meaning, composition scholar Ann Berthoff describes it this way:

Critical awareness is consciousness of consciousness (a name for the active mind). Minding the mind, being conscious of consciousness, is not the same sort of thing as thinking about your elbows when you are about to pitch a baseball: nor is it self-consciousness. Consciousness, in meaning-making activity, always involves us in interpreting our interpretations... (44)

Berthoff encourages students to “think, and then think again” by using a double-entry notebook.

Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater draw on Berthoff’s work with double-entry notebooks to teach students the primary research method of ethnography, which includes observation, interviewing, and collecting artifacts to learn about a culture or community from its members’ perspectives. In their book Fieldworking they explain, “To write double-entry fieldnotes, divide the page vertically, using the left-hand side for direct observations—concrete, verifiable details. The right-hand side is the place to capture your personal reactions, opinions, feelings, and questions about the data on the left side” (90). They suggest labeling the left column record and the right respond. Such a double-entry notetaking system can be adapted for reading various kinds of texts.

Using such a double-entry system can also help you distinguish between facts and information from your primary and secondary sources and your own interpretation and analysis of what the facts and information mean. As David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen state, “[A]nalysis, more than any other form of thought, is what college and postcollege writing calls for” (3). They define writing analytically as “the practice of using words (writing) to figure out what things mean. To analyze something is to ask how something does what it does or why it is as it is. Learning to write analytically is primarily a matter of becoming more aware of the act of thinking. Thinking is a process, an activity. Ideas don’t just happen; they’re made” (3).

After learning about different kinds of texts you’ll read in college, you’ll explore how double-entry notetaking in a writer’s notebook can help you come up with ideas, reading texts in preparation to write analytically.