Abstract

Abstract Students in first-year composition are often asked to read multiple texts quickly and independently during the process of researching and writing research essays, yet reading is rarely an explicit pedagogical focus. Researchers in metacognition and readerly expertise agree that expert reading is purposeful, defined in part by agility in engaging with a text, its context and its embeddedness within larger conversations and with one's own intentions beyond or within such conversations. Drawing from these concepts of readerly purpose and source use, we propose a theory of mining reading — a way of reading for conversation. Mining reading is when readers mine a text to understand the text's message within a broader topic or disciplinary conversation and make a text mine by identifying its use for the reader's rhetorical purpose. We describe ways to scaffold mining reading from our writing classes and share findings from student reflections, gathered with IRB approval, about the affordances and constraints of this approach. We ultimately situate mining reading as one way to help students understand reading as an active meaning making process and develop a flexible sense of purpose and agency in their research essays.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2026-01-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-12097306
Open Access
Closed
Topics

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Cites in this index (6)

  1. Rhetoric Review
  2. Rhetoric Review
  3. Written Communication
  4. College English
  5. College Composition and Communication
Show all 6 →
  1. College English
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  4. Desperately Seeking Citations: Uncovering Faculty Assumptions About the Undergraduate Res…
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  5. Strategies for Integrating Information Literacy and Academic Literacy: Helping Undergradu…
  6. Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluati…
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