Reflections on Reading and Writing Connections in L2: November 11, 2009

Reflections on Reading and Writing Connections in L2

Personally I have always heard about “reading to write” and “writing to read” as concepts but never gone into the particulars and details of each. Of course, by “always” I mean “since I came to the US to do my Masters.”  Chapters 3 and 4 were very helpful, enlightening and informative. Both concepts suggest that “the best writers are the best readers” and “the best readers are the best writers”. Connecting reading and writing suggests that both are meaning-making processes, and this, as argued by Hirvela, could be seen as “misleading” especially from instructional perspectives.

Reading and writing are seen as “inter-supportive”, and the relationship existing between them can be directional, no-directional or bi-directional. In writing to read, writing is a means of an end; reading, whereas in reading to learn, it is the other way round. I have always implemented writing-to-read techniques (I write summaries, writing a complex idea in simpler terms, writing on the margins of a certain text, annotations, underlining, asking questions, writing a sentence that gives me an idea about the whole paragraph is about, writing note cards, journaling and so on). By getting engaged all these writing-oriented activities, my current and future reading of texts gets shaped and reshaped continuously, and thus a “stronger” reading occurs and tends to surface. By the same token, our writing develops by the reading we do, not only “content-wise” but also “form-wise”.

I really like the point that Hirvela makes in relation to reading instruction and that students do not learn reading by just reading decontextualized words, words existing in a vacuum and not constructed contextually and in a continuum. Reading as such should be seen as a “social” trait of learners rather than a classroom practice, and this is what I believe Hirvela means by the macro-level of reading; reading should go beyond the classroom setting and become a process part and parcel of students’ lives. It seems to me that he is suggesting we teach reading by writing and not teach reading by reading, and he suggests a number of writing-based activities and scenarios that enhance students’ reading abilities: summarizing, synthesizing, responding, journaling, just to name a few.

As Hirvela suggests, students should be looked at and need to be taught to be “miners”, “explorers” and “invstigators” mining for gold and valuables, exploring the unknowns and putting the bits and pieces of a certain “writing crime”, as it were. We need to become like “Dora the Explorer”  The “gold” in a given text is not only content but also “linguistic, stylistic and rhetorical conventions” as is the case in the Modeling Approach. In this regard, I really appreciate the “writerly reading” discussion and I would suggest the “readerly writing” dimension as well.