This article was one of the more interesting ones that we have read and I think that I feel that way because there was a journey to be followed as we watched Eliza's skills grow. This caught my eye because I saw a little bit of my own growth in the area of the motives for reading or how I would read texts for school. I used to approach it the wrong way as well where I would read certain things all the way through highlighting almost everything and then I would not even remember what I had read after I was done.
Anyway, back to the article. Eliza's growth seemed very gradual and steady. If this was not a study that was executed over a long period of time and we just got a snapshot of Eliza's reading skills, the picture from her freshman year and senior year would be completely different and there would be no appreciation or acknowledgment of Eliza's journey and how much she had grown throughout her four years. Her reading became more "sophisticated" and she was able to take useful notes and highlight good chunks of information instead of highlighting everything simply because she did not understand it well enough to discern what was important. It seemed that the turningpoint in Eliza's learning process was when she was mentored by Shelly and was able to obtain one-on-one guidance when she needed it. At the end of the article it even lists that "Instructional Support" was one of the four factors that most likely contributed to Eliza's growth.
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5 comments:
Wow... I wrote almost the same response. I completely related to Eliza and her strategies of reading and note taking. We probably all did that as freshmen .... highlighted every important fact and wrote down every word that the professor uttered! Oh how young we used to be. :)
How funny! You, Courtney and I all wrote practically the same response to this article! guess we all know where each other stands on the maturity of reading and writing! :) But yeah, I definitely agree with you on the fact that Shelly had a huge impact on Eliza's scholastic career!
Courtney's comment reminds me -- if you look at my class notes from when I was a freshman taking biology classes, I wasn't taking notes, I was taking dictation! Of course, back then, lecturing was a major content-delivery medium, but still, I don't think I had much of a sense of selection. Maybe Belenky is right, and there are stages we all go through!
Yeah I know what you mean about reading something, highlighting everything, and then not remembering a darn thing you read. I've always thought that I used to forget what I read because I had no previous knowlege of whatever subject it was I was reading, to connect the new information to. It always seems, for me anyway, that I retain information when I relate it back to something I have already learned. If not that, I have to explain to someone verbally what I've just learned, or write down what I've just learned. For some odd reason information seems to stick better when I have to reiterate it in some way. Anyway, nice post, I totally related!
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