"Reading like a Writer"

"...Students will begin to read like writers"

First of all, I hope you love that as much as I do. So often, we talk about ourselves as learnin to write by first reading, and then writing as readers; however, Jeff Anderson's Mechanically Inclined turns that on its head. He says, "We can't expect our students to be flexible enough to apply these conventions if we don't cycle them in front of our students in various ways. By discussing the dash and figuring out what it does in authentic, well-crafted texts, students will begin to read like writers" (23). Once you understand the function of certain conventions, you can pick them out in reading and understand how it contributes to both style and meaning, which leads us to...

Making Meaning

I'm totally guilty of considering meaning of a text separately from its style, craft, and mechanics, but Anderson says this isn't necessary (or even right). Certain grammatical structures help a writer convey important details, and those details can make the difference between meaning one thing and meaning another. So it's naturally important for us to consider them in the same breath. The way a writer describes something (by using subordinate clauses, for example) is almost always deliberate, so it's important to consider why the writer did that. However, we can't consider why without understanding first how it works. This is why we've got to focus on the functions before we can really read like writers.

"What sticks with you?"

One final thing that stuck with me in Chapter 2 of Anderson's Mechanically Inclined was this question. "What sticks with you?" Anderson says, "It simplicity is its genius" (18), and really, it is. Asking students this about a long text wouldn't be so helpful, as they get bogged down with messages and themes. On the other hand, asking this about a short text (even just a single sentence) can indicate the qualities of the individual conventions that really catch the students' eyes.