McCormick’s Chapter 2 on the Three Reading Approaches

Several Take-aways:

The Cognitive Reading Approach

What I got from the reading on the cognitive approach was the importance of the reader taping into prior knowledge and experience to better understand what they are reading.  I found the experiment around the wrestling story most interesting because I have no background in that sport so I assumed like the music class that the protagonist of the story was in jail. But later analyzing the line “He was being ridden unmercifully” (21) clearly shows the story is about a wrestling match.  This example also illustrates one of McCormick’s arguments against the cognitive approach for not allowing readers to decipher their own meaning of the story after reading it and reflecting on it.  It also stifles critical thinking by not allowing discussion of different opinions of what the story is about. And I think the most important thing to take away from the cognitive reading approach is that there is hardly ever one specific meaning that a reader gets out of a text.  I had a literature professor during my undergrad that would give us quizzes with three questions on them.  He said if you got one answer correct you would get a C, if you got two answers correct you would get a B and if you got all three correct he stated, “You knocked it out of the park.”  This professor unfortunately never returned any of the quizzes so I had no idea where I stood in the class and it showed how he thought there was only one meaning behind all the readings and if you didn’t answer those three questions correctly you were wrong.  I would never want to teach reading like that and stifle my student’s imagination and critical thinking.  

The Expressive Model       

Where the cognitive approach to reading seemed rigid, the expressive model seems lax.  One would think the expressive model would be difficult to teach because the chapter didn’t give any practical examples.  I got the impression that this approach is highly focused on the reader and possibly gives too much freedom of thought without other viewpoints from fellow students or the instructor.  However, the approach does have some value in that it promotes intrinsic motivation in students and allows them to relate readings to their own experiences.

The Social-Cultural Model

This approach explains how reading is a social process and that students should read with critical literacy.  McCormick introduces new reading pedagogical practices and shows that reading can be taught differently than the other two reading approaches.  For example having students retell cultural narratives to experience reading from a different cultural perspective.  I look forward to discussing this approach in class tomorrow so I can get a better understanding of how it works.