Pseudo-active Reading vs. Active Reading

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP), average reading scores have remained the same since 1992. More concerning is that 8th grade students on average are reading below proficiency since 1992 and 12th grade students have steadily dropped since 1992. What's worse, our most vulnerable students have dropped more than any other group.

It is the purpose of this post to illuminate what is possible when it comes to reading instruction at the secondary level and show the difference between assigning reading and explicitly teaching reading. To accomplish this, I will use Jeff Zwiers’ work on pseudo-communication as a lens to analyze the reading experience in secondary education in order to better understand why students are not growing as readers even though they are assigned a significant amount of reading.

Jeff Zwiers' Pseudo-Communication

Jeff Zwiers, in his book The Communication Effect, argues that students are accustomed to engaging in what he refers to as pseudo-communication. Zwiers defines pseudo-communication as doing something unmeaningful with language. That is, students “speak” in class to gain points for better grades, quickly check-off tasks, or perform to elicit praise from their teachers. These purposes for speaking produce inauthentic conversations. Student communication does not produce new learning, language development, and higher-level thinking skills. Zwiers argues that some of this behavior is learned from years of a “factorylike framework” where students do what they are told and follow rigid checklists when speaking and writing. In this model, Zwiers contends, students are “busy and controlled” and are simply “playing the game of school.”  

Pseudo-Active Reading

At Quindew, we see a parallel between Zwiers’ work on pseudo-communication and how middle and high school students approach reading assignments in their classes. When students are assigned reading in secondary classrooms, are students looking for answers or are they actively engaged in close reading?

Pseudo-active reading happens when students read to accomplish a given task without any real purpose or strategic use of reading skills. Similar to Zwiers’ notion of pseudo-communication, pseudo-active reading has purposes like completing tasks, reading within a specific amount of time, answering questions, and reading to know something for a test. These types of purposes do not promote “active” (or close) reading, nor do they create opportunities for students to think critically and practice essential literacy skills.

Too often, reading is seen as a means to an end in secondary course work. Students become “hunters” and “gatherers” of correct answers, paying little attention to writers’ linguistic moves, their purposes, and structural patterns. The simple goal of reading becomes completion, memorization, and point accumulation.

What is the solution? Students must be taught specific reading comprehension skills that they can strategically use on their own. The types of questions good readers ask while reading must be explicitly taught through the modeling and practice of active reading. Reading becomes authentic as students are given the opportunity to analyze the meaning of a text, identify and discuss language functions, and evaluate evidence and the overall effectiveness of a writer’s style and structure.

Active, Authentic Reading

Active, authentic reading begins with a clear purpose that drives engagement and critical thinking. In the beginning, purposes are given to students to help them form habits of mind so that they can be independent readers capable of transferring reading skills to various reading tasks and academic environments. This type of purpose-driven reading is modeled and rehearsed. Eventually, students become independent readers who can strategically implement reading skills and ask questions of a text while reading. Consider the following questions active readers ask.

• What type of text is this? What can I predict about the structure, language, and content?
• What is the central idea/claim? How do I know?
• How does the writer support the central idea/claim?
• How does the writer structure/organize the information in the text?
• What is the writer’s point of view? How does the writer feel about the subject?
• How does the writer guide me through the evidence?
• What words and phrases are essential to the writer’s central claim or idea?

Pedagogy Is the Difference

An Educator’s role in skill-based instruction is simple: set high expectations, facilitate skill practice, and support all students so they can be successful. In essence, teachers become more like coaches leading a team. They introduce a skill, model it, and ask students to practice. After a few weeks of "running drills," students perform and the teacher evaluates their performance. Then, the class comes together as a team to go over the results and use that data to draw up a new game plan for the following week.

If we teach literacy skills and truly focus our efforts on helping students read, write, and think in all subject areas, then our students will learn the content and be able to make new meaning through original analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and application. Strong skill-based instruction relies on four main elements.

• Data to inform and drive instruction
• Explicit teaching
• High expectations
• Strategic scaffolds for learning
• Continuous reading skill practice

Interested in learning more? Read the full report.