SQR #4

Student’s name: José Mauro Mata & Miguel A. García

ENG 1320/1301. 161

Instructor’s name: Trang Phan

Date: September 20, 2010

Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning

The article was about rhetorical and constructive thinking that have to be developed by the readers from whatever they get form the reading. To have that part done the writer has to figure out how the constructive process plays itself out in the reading process? And how to get the readers interested in the meaning of the paper.

The process of constructing this representation is carried out by both highly automated process of recognition and inference and by the more active problem solving process on which our work focuses. For this reason trying to construct a well-articulated statement of the point of a text may require: active searching inferencing , and transforming  of one’s own knowledge Constructing process can involve  not only translating one kind of representation into another, but reorganizing knowledge  and create  a new knowledge, new conceptual nodes and connections .Thus, it is easy to understand why teachers and researchers are more interested in teach the meaning of the reading.

The other process which readers use to make meaning of the text is a strategy called “rhetorical reading” in which readers try to construct a rhetorical context for the text in order to make sense of it. Then in response to cues of the reading, readers built a complex multi-faceted representation of meaning; it is important to note that readers would not see the paper in the same way. That is why readers can construct radically different representation of the paper.  

Christina Haas and Linda Flower, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May, 1988), pp. 167-183

The construction of meaning and the rhetorical reading are strategies developed by reading. The construction of meaning is when the reader gets the idea from the text and begins creating new knowledge, and the rhetorical reading is when the reader structures a rhetorical understanding of the text to get the idea completely.

How readers can use construction of meaning and the rhetorical reading strategies in a reading?

                As reader people do not get a plain idea from a text, they would change and enrich their knowledge whit reading. If they are interested in the lecture, they would research more information about the topic, they will not get stock with any problem that may show in the text ( a wrong understanding). This way reader would have a richer and clear understanding of the text.  They would have a deeper understanding once they structure a rhetorical conception of a text, and if they share their understanding they would note many different points of view from others readers.