Critical literacy By the end of first year composition, students should: Understand interactions among ideas or characters in the text which are subtle, involved or deeply embedded. Appreciate the richness of highly sophisticated information conveyed through data, visual arrays or literary devices. Perceive structure, following texts or visual materials organized in ways that are elaborate and sometimes unconventional. Notice the style, tone and use of language, visual or digital elements, which may be intricate. Comprehend vocabulary, even when the author's choice of words is demanding and highly context dependent. Attend to an author's intent in writing the text, even if it is implicit and sometimes ambiguous. (adapted from American, 2006, p. 17) And to these goals, I would add two more: Be able to summarize main ideas and key details from a text or electronic display. Analyze, synthesize and evaluate written and/or visual material and integrate that material into their own writing for their own purposes.

The survey data reported in NALS, NAAL and IALS is not the only place that shows the need for a much greater focus on reading. Other studies such as the study of literary reading called Reading at Risk (United States, National Endowment for the Arts, 2004) show a decline in reading in the population at large based on a representative survey of 17,000 adults drawn from census data.

Strategy 1:

A cloud is a visible mass of liquid droplets or frozen crystals made of water and/or various chemicals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of a planetary body