Rationale:  Reading Discussions should facilitate collaboration and allow peer-to-peer conversation to promote deeper learning over key points of reading passage. These peer learning opportunities help students build upon each other’s knowledge and model critical reading. As students become acclimated to this learning style, they gradually assume the leadership role and make important contributions to the discourse of the subject being discussed.

Integrated Reading and Writing Objectives

Student will:

• Locate the main ideas and supporting details in written text including the student’s own work.
• Through inferencing, and deductive/inductive reasoning:

○  Build vocabulary and determine the meanings of words and phrases,

○  Analyze the relationship among ideas in written material to draw conclusions, and

○  Use these critical thinking skills to evaluate written materials.

• Identify and define a writer’s audience, purpose, point of view, tone, and intended meaning.

Integrated Reading and Writing Student Learning Outcomes

After completing this course, students will:

• Analyze the impact of reading and writing independently and using critical thinking,

problem-solving approaches in college-level materials to learn, study, and communicate with

diverse opinions and values in a free society to support life-long learning.

• Use their reading and writing skills to participate in academic debate on issues of importance to

the society and the world at large.

Discipline Specific Outcomes:

After completing this course, students will:

• Demonstrate ability to read a variety of texts from essays, articles, academic research papers,

and college textbook chapters.

○  Perform a close reading of texts for annotative and interpretive purposes

■  Use inferencing skills to bring tacit ideas into explicit knowledge or ideas about textual meanings.