The Truth, the Whole Truth..

By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association

September 2002

The reading load of a typical day:

• The morning newspaper, pulled apart by sections – headline stories and feature articles, interspersed with photographs, illustrations, graphics, and cartoons.
  
• Documents to be addressed at the workplace – memos, manuals, reports, analyses.
  
• Background reading for professional growth – journals, research articles, books.
  
• Electronic texts available at the touch of a keyboard – e-mails, Web sites, computer applications.
  
• The day’s mail, waiting at home – a bundle of letters, catalogues, solicitations, and communications.
  
• In the evening, general interest magazines, a stack of them beside a comfortable chair – news, sports, avocations.
  
• Finally, perhaps, a self-help best-seller, or the relaxing end to a full day with a favorite biography or novel.
  

All in a day’s reading. Yet an inventory of these various types of texts indicates the predominance of non-fiction. Certainly, many of us enjoy those moments of pleasure lost in fiction, those vicarious trips through stories and novels that are an integral part of our daily routine. But for most people, reading has a decidedly pragmatic emphasis: We read to become informed; we read to understand; we read to enhance our competence; we read to learn.

Classroom tasks also reflect the central role of non-fiction in our students’ lives. Throughout the curriculum, students are expected to effectively learn from a wide variety of non-fiction texts. As students mature as readers, they need more guidance in how to read the non-fiction texts that increasingly account for the bulk of their daily expectations as readers.

The Strategy
Non-fiction texts encompass a wide variety of literary genres, from the recounting of “true story” narratives such as biographies and autobiographies, to the straight expository texts intended to provide information and instruction. Harvey (1998) suggests several strategies that help students become more accomplished readers of non-fiction.

Step 1: Students need to become aware of differences between two major categories of non-fiction: reference non-fiction and authentic non-fiction. In classrooms, students receive the most practice with reference non-fiction, as they undertake assignments involving textbooks, informational Web sites, dictionaries, encyclopedias, manuals, and other specific reference sources. Reference non-fiction offers readers quick, convenient, and condensed material that has been distilled from larger, more expansive sources.

Authentic texts may include extensive development of a topic or argument and may attempt to persuade, provoke, or invite as well as inform. When students read authentic non-fiction texts, they need to recognize that features typical of reference texts are frequently absent, and that as readers they will have to develop their own personal routines for determining what is most important, for inferring key ideas and author perspective, and for summarizing and synthesizing main points. Because authentic non-fiction places more of these demands on the reader, students usually gravitate toward reference non-fiction when they are conducting investigations and engaged in research.

To help students conceptualize the nature of these two categories of non-fiction, brainstorm with the class examples of both reference and authentic texts. For example, students in U.S. History could be asked to generate meaningful sources on Lyndon Johnson.

Reference non-fiction possibilities would include various types of encyclopedias, reference books on topics such as the presidents, Web sites, and certainly history textbooks. Authentic non-fiction sources could include biographies of Johnson, books about aspects of his presidency such as civil rights and Vietnam, magazine and newspaper articles, speeches and Congressional Record transcripts, published interviews of Johnson and others, reminiscences by members of his administration, records such as presidential papers stored in the Johnson Presidential Library, videos and film clips, commentaries by admirers and critics, campaign literature, and so forth. Students would realize from these two lists that while reference non-fiction may be useful, it is also quite limited and incomplete.

Step 2: Provide students with opportunities to make side-by-side comparisons of reference and authentic non-fiction texts. A comparison of a textbook section with a Time magazine article, for example, would reveal some similarities – both texts employ headings, sub-headings, photographs and other visuals, and may feature pull-quotes and color coding.

However, some marked differences are also likely to emerge. Textbooks, like most reference non-fiction, tend to target main ideas very explicitly. Main ideas are more apt to be implied or suggested in authentic texts.

Step 3: Because authentic non-fiction is not necessarily scripted to make important points evident, students need to be able to differentiate what is interesting in an article from what is important. Harvey recommends a three-column note sheet to help students make these decisions. After reading a magazine or newspaper article, students jot notes into one of the three columns, which are labeled: “What is Interesting,” “What is Important,” and “Both Interesting & Important.” This process prompts students to make personal connections to their reading, but also to infer points the author apparently feels are most important.

Step 4: Provide frequent opportunities for students to read authentic non-fiction as a regular component of learning. Harvey recommends the use of short texts (see November 2001 “Reading Room”) from authentic sources, especially magazines and newspapers as well as related Web sites. Experiences with these texts help students gain practice in necessary strategies for reading material that is less controlled than reference non-fiction.

Posted August 23, 2002