Post for 2/27

One of my students, a freshman taking rhetoric, I think does have reading comprehension challenges. After reading Bean's chapter, I think I can locate his difficulties as a failure to reconstruct arguments as he reads, as well as issues with vocabulary and complicated syntax. Mostly we have been reading his own writing, and I have noticed that he reads aloud slowly, and repeats sentences. But when we have to read instructions from his teacher about assignments, he often struggles to keep the different parts of the prompt in his head as he goes, and is stopped on vocabulary he doesn't quite have a grasp of. We usually end up talking through the one-sentence prompts for a few minutes (what does analyze mean, how is he expected to answer the question in the prompt), and he is able to talk about what he doesn't understand and ask questions. His reasoning, once he understands the prompt, is good, so I think there is some complication in translation from written word to meaning. I also have a hunch that academic words are particularly confusing, so Bean's suggestion of having the student "write a translation" is one I might try. It would be a good way to build up his vocabulary as well, if we could talk through the meanings and synonyms of words he does not yet know.

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