1. +
Reading Difficult Texts
Kim Wilson, Ph.D.
Source:Bean, J. C., & Weimer, M. (2011). Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the
Classroom. Jossey-Bass.

2. +
Understanding the Reading
Process
 Read slowly and read often.
 Struggle to make it comprehensible.
 Hold confusing passages in “mental suspension.”
 Read difficult texts two or three times.
 Ask questions, express disagreement, link text with other
readings and personal experience.

3. +
Adjust Reading Strategies for
Different Purposes
 Reading process varies depending on the purpose.
 Adjust reading speed.
 Know the difference between reading for gist, reading for main
ideas, reading for detail, and reading for inference and
application.

4. +
Perceiving the Structure of an
Argument as you Read
 “chunk” material into discreet parts with describable functions.
Examples:
 “This part is giving evidence for a new reason”
 “This part maps out an upcoming section”
 “This part summarizes an opposing view”
 Don’t highlight everything---think of the text as a hierarchical
structure.

5. +
Difficulty in Assimilating the
Unfamiliar
 Try walking in someone else’s shoes.
 Don’t translate the text into ideas that you are comfortable with.
 Understand that “the more unfamiliar or more threatening a
new idea is, the more students transform it into something from
their own psychological neighborhoods.” (pp. 135)

6. +
Difficulty in Appreciating a Text’s
Rhetorical Context
 Recognize the “conversation” the text belongs
to.
 Understand what question is being addressed
and why the author was troubled by it.
 Recognize the historical context.
 Recognize political, ideological biases of
newspapers, magazines, television networks.
 Recognize the varying degrees of scholarly
prestige of different journals and presses.
 Consider the reputation of the author.

7. +
Difficulty Seeing Yourself in
Conversation with the Author
 Inexperienced readers regard texts as sources of inert
information rather than as arguments intended to change their
views of something.
 Play dual roles:
 1) an open-minded believer who can succumb to the text’s power.
 2) a skeptical doubter who can find weaknesses in a text.

8. +
Cultural literacy assumed by the
text’s author
 Understand cultural codes of the text (background
information, allusions, common knowledge that the author
assumed that the reading audience would know).

9. +
Inadequate Vocabulary
 Use a dictionary.
 Understand context.
 Develop an ear for irony and humor.
 Define technical terms.
 Understand that language evolves and that the meaning of
words changes over time.

10. +
Difficulty in Tracking Complex
Syntax
 Understand sentence structure of primary sources and
scholarly articles. These differ from anthologies in significant
ways.
 Read out loud and practice inflection; practice isolating
grammatical units; and isolating main clauses from subordinate
clauses and phrases.

11. +
Difficulty in Adjusting Reading Strategies
to the Varieties of Academic Discourse
 Recognize prose styles, discourse structures, and
argumentative strategies differ from one discipline to the next
and from one historical period to the next.