"Learning to Read Biology" by Christina Haas (Precis 3)

Why do colleges require students to take various courses that seem unrelated to their major? Why does it always feel like students must jump through unnecessary hoops to acquire a degree? Christina Haas’ investigation shows that different college courses benefit students by exposing them to multitudes of discourse training that cohesively develop college level rhetoric. Her longitudinal, in-depth research focusing on Eliza beginning at her freshmen year explains the gradual changes that ultimately suggest these unnecessary hoops are actual useful if not necessary for acquiring academic discourse.

In Eliza’s freshmen year, Haas discovers that Eliza’s reading of science courses is geared exclusively on preparing for tests. In English courses however, she read perceiving the text as a “source of information to extract and more of a place in which someone says something” (363). According to Haas, most incoming freshmen perceive text as autonomous—that is the belief “that academic texts [are] discrete, highly explicit, even “timeless” entities functioning without contextual support from author, reader, or culture” (589). There is no connection made between the author to the book, at times students will explain the ideas from their reading saying “the book says” rather than the “author says” (363). In her sophomore year her reading changed only in that she was aware of more points of view. She continued to see written works as autonomous texts and performed very well that year. Her reading improved significantly when she began a work study job growing protein mutants in a lab. She developed sophisticated reading techniques “skimming, reading selectively, moving back and forth through texts, reading for different purposes at different times” (366). Also, she had noticed that articles written from a particular time period were of no use to her for current scientific developments. In other words, she has identified a relationship between text and the time it was produced. By her senior year she gained greater awareness of the intertextual nature of discourse, she was able to draw connections that enhanced her understanding of the subject.

Most importantly, the changes in Eliza’s academic discourse reveal that she began to “see her own role as not simply learning the facts but of negotiating meaning” (371). Haas suspects the changes may have been influenced by the different kinds of texts that required different strategies, goals, and views of discourse (372). There are other variables in Eliza’s collegiate experience to suggest her rhetorical development was not a result of the courses required of her to take. It is undeniable however, certain tasks in English courses provided her opportunities to practice interpreting meaning. Rather than simply understanding what authors are saying, by her senior year was focused on extracting meaning and significance from text. The ability to apply different strategies and techniques to any task and see connections can certainly improve a student’s critical thinking skills—which is useful for any career.

MLA Citation

Haas, Christina. “Learning to Read Biology: One Student’s Rhetorical Development in College.”

Literacy a Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, Mike Rose. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 358-375.