Break It Down!: Boost Your College Reading Comprehension

By Clifton Estus Laird and Vicki Vernon Lott

Heres a witty, engaging, and dynamic interactive guide that uses sparkling dialogue, riveting characters, and appealing graphics to pique and hold the interest of students even those who dont like to read to help them in college-level reading comprehension. Break It Down! tries to improve and sharpen the students study skills, critical thinking, and test-taking strategies in a fun, funny, and refreshing way. It introduces unique steps, methods, and approaches like Brainups -- to aid them in college. Educators and authors Vicki Vernon Lott and Clifton Estus Laird aim to provide students good strategies for life-long learning. Start discovering them now!

What Students Are Saying About Break It Down!

It really made English fun! Not only did it help in English, but it also helped to improve my study habits for other classes. -- Jacqwese Stephens.

Established a new and easy way to learn at a level I could enjoy. -- Jessica Smith.

Helped me understand a subject that I couldnt comprehend. -- Devon McVea.

Its the primary reason why I changed my major from Criminal Justice to English. It helped me expand my vocabulary and think more critically. -- Danielle Cooper.

Improved my college-level comprehension 100%. -- Tristain Bell.

An amazing book that, I believe, all students should read. Because of this book, I now know how to express myself properly in a society full of confusion. -- Asia Terry.

What Instructors Are Saying

Students respond to Break it Down. The books tips and tricks are presented in a way that encourages students and helps them not only improve their reading and writing skills, but also offers an accessible approach to academia. Michael Salerno.

Break It Down does a great job of preparing students to meet the various academic challenges they will face throughout their college years. The book truly earns its name and is a wonderful tool for standardized test preparation. -- Randolph Walker

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 10, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462836949

Clifton Estus Laird

About the Authors The authors, Vicki Vernon Lott and Clifton Estus Laird II, work at Lane College, a four-year liberal arts college in Jackson, Tennessee, founded in 1882 to serve the children of newly-freed slaves. Both have taught English and have studied critical thinking.

Book preview

Copyright © 2008 by Vicki Vernon Lott and Clifton Estus Laird.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

42098

Contents

Preface

About the Authors

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Preface

Most college students aren’t ready for college-level reading.¹ What’s worse is that students who are male, African American, Hispanic American, Native American, or who come from households earning less than $30,000 per year may be twice as likely to be unprepared for college-level reading.²

Naturally, our system has failed to serve these students. But rather than point fingers or complain about the existing situation in elementary, middle, and high schools, we decided to work on fixing the problem. This book focuses on those students who have finished high school and have enrolled in college, but who need early intervention to improve their reading skills in order to succeed in college.

According to an ACT report, Reading Between the Lines, experience reading complex texts is the key to developing college-level reading skills.³ Upon finishing high school, students in the groups mentioned above may have had insufficient exposure to the type of texts they will encounter in college and in the workplace. They may also be unfamiliar with techniques or tools available to enhance the development of their reading comprehension skills. Our aim is to bridge that gap with this book as a supplementary precursor, guide, or reference for learning materials used in freshman composition classes.

Virtually all educators agree that the best way for students to learn any subject is to make the content relevant to their lives. Today’s young people might call that keeping it real. In our efforts to keep it real, and with the knowledge that many students who use this guide may not have had sufficient experience reading complex texts in high school, we have interspersed concepts, vocabulary, and other information that may be unfamiliar to the students with narrative that is intended to be humorous and fun. We do so with the assistance of a fictional character, Victor, whose very name connotes success. Victor asks fundamental questions that we believe the students want to ask, and makes comments from what we believe would be the students’ perspective.

A major motive for introducing a young, cool yet scholarly minority male is to combat a major factor that directs too many minority students, especially males, away from academic achievement: fear of acting white.⁴

We hope that instructors will find this book to be a useful supplement to Freshman Composition learning materials. We hope that students who follow this guide will learn to enjoy reading while they increase their reading comprehension skills at the same time. We welcome comments and suggestions from both instructors and students at: [e-mail] or [e-mail].

¹   Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness in Reading. ACT, 2006, page 1.

²   Ibid. page 2.

³   Ibid. page 11.

⁴   Edmund W. Gordon, Ed.D., Establishing a System of Public Education, The Covenant (Chicago: Third World Press, 2006) p. 27

About the Authors

Vicki Vernon Lott was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and received the Bachelor of Music degree from St. Norbert College in DePere, Wisconsin. She received the Master of Music Education, and the Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. Lott taught 9th grade English for two years at Catholic High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is co-author with Daryl Wedwick of the textbook, Three Arts in Perspective (Acton MA: Copley Publishing Group, 2003). Since 1993, she has served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lane College, an HBCU (Historically Black College or University) in Jackson, Tennessee. She has presented papers on critical thinking at the International Conference on Critical Thinking in Berkeley, California, in July 2005 and July 2006. In addition, she has presented sessions on Critical Thinking at the 2006 and 2007 Annual Conferences of the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and served as SACS consultant for institutions focusing their Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) on Critical Thinking.

Clifton Estus Laird was born in Texarkana, Texas. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee, majoring in Communication with an emphasis in Theater and minoring in Bible. He received the Master of English Literature and a Certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Memphis, where he was named a member of the international honor society, Phi Kappa Phi. Laird has served as a youth minister with the Hopewell Church of Christ in Hopewell, Virginia, and as a pulpit minister with the Hialeah Church of Christ in Hialeah, Florida. Fluent in Spanish, Laird has done cross-cultural mission work among Hispanics in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Hialeah, Florida; and the villages of Tortugero and Las Ceibas in Nicaragua. Since 1996 he has taught English at Lane College, a Historically Black College in Jackson, Tennessee.

About the Illustrator

Craig Howarth was born in Lancashire, England, in 1962 and immigrated to South Africa in 1970. After training with the Air Force, he pursued his love of art and design at the University of Natal, where he earned a Bachelor of Architecture in 1992. He has over twenty years experience as an artist and often works on an international basis.

Introduction

In your first few days and weeks of college, you may spend more time studying subjects like mathematics, science, and psychology than you do English. Why? Maybe you think you know enough English to make it through college. After all, if you were born in the United States, you’ve been speaking and hearing English all of your life. You’ve been reading in English at least since first grade. So, why have we written this guide to break it down?

There are several reasons:

1.   You may not like to read, and we want you to begin to love to read;

2.   If you already like to read, we want you to read much, much more.

3.   Whether or not you like to read, we want you to better understand and remember whatever you read;

4.   We want you to use what you learn about reading comprehension to become a better writer; and

5.   We want you to use what you learn about reading comprehension to become a more critical thinker in every subject.

But the overarching reason we want you to improve your reading skills is to prepare you for success in life—both in college and beyond. Improving your reading skills will increase your ability to find meaningful employment, or receive promotions on the job you have. It will prepare you for graduate school, law school, medical school, or whatever academic endeavor you pursue once receiving your baccalaureate degree.

Thanks, Victor, and, uh, tru dat, as the young people like to say. What’s more, this is not high school reading—this is college reading.

This little book will give you the secret keys of college-level reading comprehension. Don’t like reading? You just need the secrets. Ready to win? Let’s go!

It’s about time! How do I get great at reading?

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We’re going to show you how you can better understand and remember what you read, with the help of certain concepts and tools. You might want to think of these tools as keys, since they open up treasure chests of knowledge, aka, books.

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Cool. In High school, I didn’t always understand what I read. But even when I did understand, I sometimes forgot it by test time! How are you guys going to

teach me to better understand what I read, and remember it too?

Just like a football coach or cheerleading coach, we’re here to help you learn by practicing. We’re going to teach you the difference between truly remembering (allowing information to soak into your mind and stay there) and cramming in rote fashion (and then forgetting it in a few days—or even hours!). We’ll break this down for you in Chapter 1. We’re also going to explore some universal tools to help you understand what you read by teaching you certain questions to ask yourself, and then showing you how to find the answers—for yourself. But you’ll have to do your part. You’ve got to suit up and show up. That means you’ll have to come to class every day with the right materials and tools.

I knew you were going to put me to work! Okay…

what tools do I need?

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The physical tools include:

1.   Dictionary.

2.   Notebook.

3.   Pen or pencil.

The intellectual tools include:

1.   Mindset—positive attitude of wanting to learn.

2.   Self-confidence: telling yourself that you know you can do it.

3.   Certain universal standards and elements dating back to Socrates thousands of years ago, that we will break down for you.

Socrates, a Greek philosopher who lived from around 470-300 B.C., was a leading thinker and teacher of his time. He was sentenced to death by a court in Athens, and was forced to drink poison. His crime was that his teachings were corrupting young people.1 In other words, he taught them to think for themselves. His approach to teaching, called the Socratic method or Socratic questioning, is still widely used today by educators at all levels, and is especially popular in preparing prospective lawyers for courtroom questioning. The basis of the Socratic method is that the instructor asks questions rather than gives answers. Although the concept is simple, carrying it out is both rigorous and engaging.

In applying the Socratic method to improve reading comprehension, the instructor asks questions like:

1.   What information in the passage is important?

2.   Do you know the words used (vocabulary)?

3.   What is the basic concept of the passage?

4.   What is the purpose of the passage?

5.   What questions, inferences, assumptions, and implications are important?

6.   What conclusions can we logically draw from the passage?

7.   From whose point of view is the passage written?2

Sounds deep!

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Not really. Although we will move at a rather quick pace, we will break it down for you, chapter by chapter, step by step. And we’ll be with you all the way. Our approach will show you how to read between the lines to discover implications and inferences, identify assumptions, draw conclusions, and so on. This may sound difficult, but our aim is to guide you through the process. Hang in there! Just like learning to play the guitar or making the track team, improving your reading skills takes practice, practice, practice.

Ha! You can’t scare me. Let’s go!

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¹   Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1992) p. v.

²   The items in bold constitute the elements of thought and intellectual standards as explicated in the work of Richard Paul and Linda Elder. See The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder and Richard Paul, The Foundation for Critical Thinking, 2007, www.criticalthinking.org. Also see Appendices 1 and 2.

Chapter I

Brain-Ups

You can improve your reading comprehension, and you can start with some things that you already know. It’s like doing sit-ups, push-ups, or chin-ups—except you’re doing brain-ups. When you start doing push-ups, you do as many as you’re able to do now, give it a rest, then do another set of reps. Do this every day, consistently, and your core strength and flexibility improve. Brain-ups work the same way for your reading comprehension.

Let’s warm up with a brain-up called Imagining. Imagine that you are a character in a stage play. Most theatrical productions use background scenery, lighting, props, and costumes. This sets the stage. Similarly, we want to review some things right now to set the stage for you to stay on track with your reading assignments in all of your classes.

Rest assured, you will have reading assignments in virtually all of your classes, whether it’s a History class, a Biology class, a Fine Arts class, or a Mathematics class. Our focus throughout this book is on reading textbooks and narrative passages