Reading and Writing

Daniel Libertz

Is it obvious that reading and writing are connected to one another? That it is hard to do one without the other? Obviously, you can’t really write without knowing how to read. Or, maybe you can, but it would be pretty limited; you maybe couldn’t do all that much as a writer without knowing how to read. There scenario there, I supposed, would be someone giving you verbal instructions to put letters together in clusters to form words. That might be as much as you could do.

You could probably read quite a bit without writing. There is no requirement to write while you read. Most of us spend all kinds of time reading without writing, since we learned how to read. But, then again, what is writing? What do we do when we write? Like in the scenario of someone giving you verbal instructions to write letters that clustered into words and sentences, you can write in a way that makes no sense to you. To “make sense” is one of the powerful things writing can do.

Even if you never write while you read, you are trying to “make sense” of the reading, usually, beyond only the exact definitions of words that you are decoding as you read. What are you doing? You are asking questions, you are checking in to see if you understand how any one part you are reading fits in with the larger argument or narrative, you are connecting what you are reading to your own personal experience so it is more understandable and immediately useful, and so on. Perhaps, then, if you do those things, there are advantages to writing while you read, so you capture some element of those thoughts you are having anyway while reading. So the “sense” you are making is captured for future sense-making (or, rather, meaning-making) as you review those same notes and the same reading again.

Compared to reading, as a writer, maybe it makes a lot more sense to say that there is an advantage to being an attentive reader-who-writes (or writer-who-reads. You write something, you read it back. Does this say what I want it to say? Is that the word I want? In that order? And then you might change it and ask the same questions again. Or, maybe you don’t do this until you have a full draft, or something close to it. This, of course, is the process of revision—to see again what you already have written down and then decide what changes you want to make based on that second (or third, or fourth, or eleventh) “vision.”

Of course, there, too, is the oft-repeated advice that, to be a good writer, you have to read a lot and read deeply. It certainly can’t hurt to do that! The more sentences you take in, the more ways of using language to make things (knowledge, feelings, whatever you want to call it). For this chapter, though, I want to focus on some specific strategies for writing while reading, as there can be a real advantage to writing while you read. For more on reading while writing (rather than writing while reading), please see our chapter on revision. And, also relevant, our chapters on using sources and findings/evaluating sources. Our argument throughout this text, really, is that when you consider your reading as connected to your writing, it opens up a lot of possibilities for getting the most out of both.

Getting Started

Preview your text before you start reading/listening/viewing. This helps activate things you already know about the topic and makes reading a bit smoother. Also, knowing the general layout of the text gives you a head-start since you have a rough idea of how the text is organized. Here are things you can do:

• Write down what your purpose is. Even better, make sure you can clearly see what you wrote down while you read so you can read what you wrote as you take breaks while reading. Knowing why you are reading will help you focus more deeply on relevant portions and speed up a little more on parts that are less relevant to you.

• Consider the “genre” of the text you are reading (i.e., the “type” of document and how that document has common “moves” or features that help signal to audiences different kinds of reading, action, thinking to take up). Writing studies scholar Michael Bunn, who specializes his research in reading, recommends that students and teachers, together, learn what type of reading is assigned and how there might be specific ways to read that text (512). For instance, a “white paper” report is usually a kind of document that is written for decision-makers who need information in relation to an upcoming decision to make. White papers often conclude with either a recommended option to take or a series of recommended options to take. An academic article, by contrast, is an exploration of research conducted by an expert, which often does not conclude with clear answers but often instead with several questions for other researchers to take up. These purposes result in different structures and knowing about those structures ahead of time helps readers take in the information more easily.

• If there is an “abstract,” read every word. An abstract is a brief summary of an academic article or report.

• Read all section headings.

• Read the first sentence of most paragraphs.

• Read the last sentence of most paragraphs.

• Read the full introduction and the full concluding section.

• Try to write a sentence that describes what you think the reading is about. Be tentative. You have only skimmed so far so you will have missed some things. Be open to being wrong (which is okay to be)

While Reading

Keeping your body engaged while reading is important. Creating marks and writing in response to your reading helps keep your brain engaged, but your full body likes to do things (see “Distraction Management” below).

• Remember your purpose as you are reading (see previous section).

• Annotate. Writing right on your book, paper, or screen. If a print copy, you can use pen or pencil to make notes in the margins. If a digital copy, you can use a PDF reader’s highlight and/or commenting function to make notes. You can also use programs like Hypothes.is or Perusall that have more sophisticated ways to annotate—and, what’s great about these is that you can annotate with friends, and get ideas from their ideas in one big idea amalgamation! See the end of this chapter for tips on annotating. Here is a picture of what it might look like on a print text (note how you can do this with or without highlighting, both work!):

• Highlight. Make sure if you do this, that you don’t highlight too much. If more than, say, one-third of the page is highlighted it kind of defeats the purpose! (i.e., nothing will stand out if most of the page is yellow, blue, pink, etc.). It is even better to annotate first and then highlight second, so you remember why you found it important!

• Underline. Same note as above about overdoing it.

• Double Entry Journal (also called “dialectical notebook”). This strategy, coined by composition scholar Ann E. Berthoff, involves using a separate notebook with one line down the center, where one side is an observation and the other side and one side is an observation of that observation. You could also do this digitally in Word or Google Docs by creating a table or you can just use paper and pen. For instance, on the left side, you write a quote or paraphrase of something you read (along with the page number you found it and, to make it even easier when reviewing later, some information like location on the page). Then, on the right side, you write a response in the same way you might write in an annotation but it is a direct reaction to what you wrote in the left side of the page. See below for an example:

p. 33 (top) “Indefinite pronouns refer to nonspecific persons or things.”

Pretty much any pronoun that isn’t gendered: anybody, anyone, anything, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, neither, nobody, no one, nothing, somebody, someone, something

p. 34 (top) collective nouns typically singular in Amer. English

Why “usually” singular? What are the exceptions?

Collective nouns that are singular: committee, jury, audience, crowd, family, team

• Reflective memos. As you read, you might encounter something that gives you either great ideas or a lot frustration. Lean into those moments to do some writing. If you read something that gives a lot of good ideas for a writing assignment, start writing now. Try a paragraph and see where it goes. You might also read something you just don’t understand or you are frustrated by your reading experience. Write in response to that, too. Write out what you find difficult to understand and why (or a “difficulty paper” as composition scholars Marolina Salvatori and Patricia Donahue call it). The point of such a move is to “identify and begin to hypothesize the reasons for any difficulty you might be experiencing as you read” so you can begin the work of the next step for reading, to get closer to understanding (Salvatori and Donahue 9). Writing things out might help you toward better understanding, or, at the least, help you come up with questions you might want to ask your instructor (or simply questions for yourself to continue to engage!).

• Spontaneous notes. Like the reflective memo, but less coherent. You can simply write quick notes with some scattered thoughts driving that note-taking rather than more sustained writing as the above bulletpoint calls for.

• Take note of unfamiliar words and look them up if they seem important. Some things are just really hard to understand without knowing what some key terms mean!

• Take note of familiar words that are used in weird ways and may have technical meanings different from the common meaning (e.g., “grading” in the context of school means a letter or number that is supposed to represent some of kind of evaluation of school work; “grading” in the context of construction means making soil level). You might think you know a word, but it might mean something different. See if a dictionary might have the alternative definition or just use a search engine with the word along with another word or phrase that contains information about the scholarly discipline that the author belongs to (e.g., “grading” and “engineering”).

• During difficult parts, slow down. During easier parts, speed up. During especially difficult parts, try reading out loud to see if verbalizing might help (sometimes our brains will quickly skip over things when reading silently).

• Re-read. There is no shame in re-reading. Your professors have to do this often. Whether it be a sentence, paragraph, or the whole thing, if you need to get more out of your reading you may have to keep returning to it. This is why annotations can be helpful! In fact, you should re-read! But you might read faster (or slower…or you might skim) depending on where you are in the text or what reading (your first vs. your fourth reading).

• Distraction management. You will be distracted and that is okay! Have a plan for when this happens. There are several strategies at the end of this chapter about managing distractions.

• Remind yourself that it’s okay if you don’t understand things or are frustrated. Don’t give up. This is how reading about difficult topics goes—your professors get confused and frustrated, too. They just have more experience reading the sorts of things you are likely just beginning to read. But even with their experience, they will never fully understand what they read. We are always reaching for meaning, getting the most of what we can get, and we keep going. It is a challenge and it should be difficult. If your readings could talk, they would genuinely say “it’s not you, it’s me.”

After Reading

Returning to the “big picture” after having read something will help you make sense of what you can do with this reading. Without a purpose, it is hard for us to remember what we read because we lose connection to our lives (i.e., what are you going to do with this reading? What does it help you with?). Here are some things you can try after you read (you might want to do this immediately or take a break before trying these out):

• Review what you did while reading: highlights, underlines, annotations, double entry journal, reflective memos, and/or spontaneous notes.

• Choose 3 (or any number) of things you highlighted/underlined/wrote while reading and keep writing. Why are these things important to you? What more is to say about them? How could you use them in discussion? How could use them for a writing assignment or exam response? These are a sample of questions you can use to keep you moving forward to connect the reading to something you’ll do in the future.

• Write a 200-word summary of what you just read. Review highlights/underlines/annotations/notes to help you.

Digital vs. Print Reading (or, Digital and Print Reading)

While scholars of digital reading have shown that practices of digital and print reading may not have stark differences—and, furthermore, that differences often pointed out might say more about “nostalgia, fears, and hopes” that are unrelated to reading practices—there are some important notes about the “digital reading condition” that are worth trying to understand (Engberg and Sougaard Pedersen 121). There are various kinds of reading practices that all readers engage in, which can be altered based on technologies made available, but it is important to remember that most strategies for reading work in all kinds of reading (e.g., annotation); it is more of a matter of remembering that the materiality of the reading (e.g., scrolling a screen vs. turning a page) can slightly alter a reader’s approach (Engberg and Sougaard Pedersen 121). Tanya K. Rodrigue catalogs several digital reading strategies from various scholars of digital reading (252-254):

• “Internet Reciprocal” Reading. This strategy involves group navigation of digital texts, working in groups and trying reading strategies, and then using what was learned to try something out in their own individual projects.

• “Preview a Digital Text Before Screen Engagement.” Here, students read the webpage title and website title, “scan menu choices without clicking on anything,” “make predictions about where each link goes,” “explore interactive features, pop-up menus, and scroll bars that may reveal additional information about the site,” and “make a judgment about whether to explore the site further and, if so, where to begin” (252).

• “Use of Online Software to Ease Cognitive Overload, Teach Specific Digital Reading Skills.” Here, use of software (e.g., ad-blockers, readability software) to prevent distraction in combination of summarizing information into “meaningful chunks,” scanning for “keywords and phrases,” “contemplate[ing] hyperlinks before clicking on them,” and “determine[ing] a logical and clear navigational path” (252).

• Use Three Reading Strategies that Complement One Another: Close Reading, hyperreading, and machine reading.

• Close Reading: “work with textual passages, looking closely at language and meaning” (253).

• Hyperreading: “’reader-directed, screen-based, computer assisted reading’” where readers “filter by keywords,” “skim,” “peck (pull out a few items from a larger text),” “juxtapose (engage several open windows at once,” and “scan (read quickly to identify items of interest)” (253).

• Machine Reading: “use online software (e.g., Wordle clouds that display word-frequency graphics) to identify patterns in texts” (253).

• “Genre Awareness.” This involves learning “to draw on genre awareness (an understanding of multimodality, recurrent reading practices, and the nature of genres as interactive and rhetorical) when engaging with a digital text” (254). This involves understanding that “the screen requires a different reading process from print, yet print reading practices may be helpful in determining and online reading plan,” keeping in mind that “digital genres invite recurring reading practices” while also remembering that distinct genres and situations require different practices, and that “genres are multimodal,” meaning that you have to consider features beyond alphanumeric writing (e.g., images, audio, video, design features) (251).

Tips on Annotation

Annotation = A note one makes on or about their reading.

When you pause while reading/viewing/listening, this could be a natural sign that it is time to take a note: whether you are frustrated or interested, something is probably worth noting in terms of content but also in terms of your own processes and feelings as a reader/listener/viewer.

• It is okay not to understand something! Your annotation can be a question.

• Put things into your own words. This helps comprehension way more than using the same exact language of what you read. More memorable this way.

• Make connections to other things you already know from personal experience, other readings you have done, or other parts of the text you are reading/listening/viewing. We only know the world through what we already know.

• Notice things that are repeated and think about why they are being repeated. New contexts to understand? A central idea being emphasized?

• Think about assumptions the writer/composer is making for their text to make sense. What is unstated and how is that useful for any part of the text you are reading?

• Is something ambiguous? Does it have multiple meanings? Note things that have several possible meanings.

• Re-read your notes after you are done reading/listening/viewing but also re-read notes before you do the next activity related to that text.

Distraction Management

Below are several strategies for managing distractions while you read (or write or study or anything that requires focus and sustained engagement!):

Timer/Scheduling Techniques

• Pomodoro Method- This method involves working in cycles. For example, you can set a work cycle for 25 minutes and a “break” for 5 minutes after that. After four of these cycles, you can then schedule a longer break (e.g., 15 minutes). The idea here is that by scheduling this time, you end up providing yourself more quality break-time and more sustained work time.

• Scheduling Check-ins (e.g., email, texts)- If you schedule time every day for non-reading work, you’ll be less tempted to do that work as a “distraction” away from your writing.

List Making

• A “Parking Lot”1- Similar to the last item, this method involves combatting “work” that interrupts the current work we want to do (i.e., reading) by having a separate sheet of paper or word-processing document on our computer near us as we read. Whenever we think of something (e.g., I need to text my friend about birthday plans, need to work on my math homework), we write it in our parking lot to do later and not now.

• Getting Things Done- This prioritizes doing small tasks up front. You start your work day or work block by listing as many of the tasks you need to do as possible. And then you complete the easiest ones up front before moving to the bigger ticket items. Getting things done boosts your confidence and makes you feel good, so you can then move on to the big thing (e.g., reading, writing) with a good attitude. You can also think about this in terms of reading or writing tasks rather than any tasks (e.g., setting margins, coming up with section titles, completing a reference list).

Rituals

As we are successful with a certain routine, it can be a good practice to repeat it until it gets stale. Hopefully, our brain starts to associate productivity with repetitious activities involving things like:

• Time/Place- For some people, this means the same time and place every time you read or write, but it could really mean just being consistent for an extended period of time (e.g., as one place/time gets stale, switch it up for two weeks). If you are more alert during one time of day or if you need noise, then maybe a coffee shop from 3pm-5pm is a block of time and place you want to prioritize.

• Food/Drink- Scheduling out what food and drink you will consume can be motivating and comforting. Some foods, too, may boost brain function (e.g., dark chocolate).

• Noise- Some people find the noise of people or nature comforting and thus helpful for work. Some people need silence. Music, too, can be helpful in tuning out other noise distractions or motivating you to pound some keys on your laptop. Some music, like Baroque, follows roughly the same beats per minute as the human heart and may be relaxing in a way that centers your mind and body.

• Meditation or Mindfulness; Quality Breaks- If you find meditation or mindfulness practices relaxing or helpful with focus, you might schedule time to engage in these practices (e.g., during a 5-minute break in a Pomodoro cycle). You might also just make sure your breaks aren’t engaging in the same sorts of cognitive and physical activity that your reading or writing engages (e.g., looking at a screen). Get up, take a walk, etc.

• Objects- Playing with objects (anything! A pair of dice, a pipe cleaner, a fidget spinner or cube, playdoh) or doodling can help with anxiety in ways more helpful than scrolling through social media. Further, you can do some of these things as you read or write.

• Writing Aids- Having the right pen, the right notebook, using the right desk. Whatever it is that is a complement to your reading writing that makes you feel like it is the time to read or write can help here.

Apps (can’t say for sure if all of these still exist!)

There are some great apps you can download to help manage distractions and your writing process. Here are a few examples:

• Evernote, Mendeley, Zotero- Notetaking software like Evernote and Mendeley or citation management programs like Zotero can help with general writing process stuff or to help with list-making methods.

• Focus Time- Can use any clock app, as well, to do Pomodoro, but this one also has some more features (e.g., tracking productivity statistics over time).

• Forest- Uses a Pomodoro-like timer, and as the timer runs, a picture of a tree grows. Each time you look at your phone, though, the tree starts to die.

• Freedom- You set an amount of time and Freedom blocks access to the internet for that length of time.

• Headspace- There are free mediation/mindfulness app options, too (e.g., Stop, Breathe & Think; Calm; Meditation Studio), but Headspace has a great reputation and it has helped me a lot.

• Rescue Time- Can block sites and also record how you distribute your time among apps you use.

• Scrivener-This program helps with large writing projects to help organize content and keep track of progress.

• Self Control- Can allow you to specify things you want it to block for a duration of time (Mac only)

• Write or Die- Making B.F. Skinner proud, you enter in incentives (e.g., music you like) and disincentives (e.g., sounds you dislike) and the app will populate one or the other based on your progress toward you word-count goal.

• Xmind- A program to do detailed mind mapping for working out your thoughts for a writing project.

Reading/Writing Partners or Groups

Having a good accountability partner or accountability group can be a huge boost to productivity and might make you feel better. It is positive peer pressure: someone to check in with, to struggle through writing together, to talk through an idea. Just make sure this person or people won’t be distracting. A good friend is not the same thing as a good reading or writing partner; it could be that your dynamic will make it too easy to distract each other. Finally, a writing partner can be furry (or feathery, or scaly): sometimes our pets can be great in helping us feel better as we despair over our reading or writing!

Reading and writing can feel very solitary and lonely, so having the support of other people or animals can go a long way toward helping you get energized and focused.

Works Cited

Berthoff, Ann E. “How We Construe is How We Construct.” Comppile, 1982, pp. 84-86.

Bunn, Michael. “Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition Classroom.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 64, no. 3, 2013, pp. 496-516.

Engberg, Maria, and Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen. “Deep, Focused, and Critical Reading Between Media.” The Digital Reading Condition, edited by Maria Engberg, Iben Have, and Birgitte Sougaard Pedersen, Routledge, 2023, pp. 113-121.

Rodrigue, Tanya K. “Digital Reading: Genre Awareness as Tool for Reading.” Pedagogy, vol. 17, no. 2, 2017, pp. 235-257.

Salvatori, Mariolina Rizzi, and Patricia Donahue. The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty, Pearson Longman, 2005.