Quick, what are the Big Four questions you should be thinking about when reading non-fiction?
If you said...
What is the author's credibility?
What is the author's purpose? (Is the author biased?)
What are the arguments?
Is the information credible? (How is it supported?)
...then you are on your way to being an astute, informed reader of nonfiction.
Now do you have to ask these questions every time you sit down to read a piece of nonfiction? No, but depending on what you plan on doing with that information, those questions should always be floating around in the back of your mind.
If you are reading something so that you can better defend a position, or be more aware of the opposition's arguments, or just to formulate an opinion, then you need to be asking these questions.
You and a few classmates are currently breaking down an article on whether or not we should raise the minimum wage. You are also writing an assessment on the strengths of the article. While you all seem to have done a thorough job of analyzing the authors' credentials, and you easily picked up on the bias they brought to the article, the assessments of the arguments have not been that insightful. How many arguments did they offer? How many of the opposition's points did they break down? What evidence did they offer to support any of these positions? If you want to learn, you have to dig deep.
We'll pick up the discussion tomorrow, look at another article on the same topic (perhaps the other side?), and I see a debate in our near future.
Battle of the Book tomorrow! I know over half of my period one class is participating. I hope you have a team. Be sure to do some last minute cramming. Kenneth Oppel is in town as I write this. He'll be with us tomorrow. He might even ask some questions during the battle.
See you tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment