Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [17]
This is a useful way of understanding what you are being asked to acquire in a college or graduate school education, the commonly held concepts that each discipline accepts as givens.
A rhetorical orientation is especially prominent in the following places in Writing Analytically:
short take on Writing in the Disciplines in this chapter, which explains why you should think about disciplinary formats rhetorically
Chapter 3, where analysis is defined rhetorically
Chapters 15 and 16, where paper organization and types of introductory and concluding paragraphs are explained rhetorically
Chapters 17 and 18, where word choice and sentence structure are treated rhetorically
WRITING ABOUT READING: BEYOND “BANKING”
Both the amount of reading and what you are expected to do with it will undergo significant upgrades in college. It is fairly common for those new to college writing to expect to write about reading in one of three ways: by handing it back on tests, by agreeing or disagreeing with it, or by registering a more elemental personal response, which is a common student misunderstanding triggered by the so-called “reaction paper.” Much of the writing about reading you will be asked to do in college will move you beyond these three responses.
The Banking Model of Education—and Beyond
You will of course be responsible for retaining what you have read and “handing it back” on examinations. This is known as the banking model of education. The learner (in the banking model) is mostly a passive conduit taking things in and spitting them back out. Educational theorist Paolo Freire mounted a famous attack on this model, arguing that an education consisting entirely of “banking”— information in/ information out—does not teach thinking. Being able to recite the ideas of others does not automatically render a person capable of thinking about these ideas or producing them.
Banking is not limited to quizzes and exams. It also occurs when teachers, through the best of intentions, do too much of the thinking for you. When there is discussion of the reading in class, for example, it often moves from a teacher’s questions. If you write about the reading, this often takes place after the teacher has presented his or her explanations in lectures, maybe even with PowerPoints that foreground the teacher’s selection of important points. In these ways, you are “protected” from the task of treating the reading as raw material, so to speak.
At some point, however, you have to figure out how to “process” complex course information for yourself. It is hard to learn to do a cartwheel solely by watching someone else do one. And the best way to learn is to write about the reading, not after the teacher has banked it for you but before.
Why write about reading? It will teach you how to do the things with readings that your teachers know how to do—how to find the questions rather than just the answers, how to make connections between one reading and another, how to bring together key passages from readings and put these into conversation with each other, and how to apply an idea or methodology in a reading to understanding something else.
Virtually all of the methods and procedures in this book can help you to write analytically about reading. See especially:
Chapters 2 and 4, the two Toolkits of Analytical Methods, offer heuristics that are essential for analyzing reading
Chapter 5, Writing About Reading: More Moves to Make with Written Texts, shows you how to use a reading as a lens
Chapter 13, Using Sources Analytically: The Conversation Model, shows you how to put readings into conversation with each other and how to find your own voice in the conversation
Chapter 7, Making Common Topics More Analytical,