The Radical Case for Teaching Skim Reading in First-Year Writing

The Radical Case for Teaching Skim Reading in First-Year Writing encourages faculty, particularly in writing studies, to check internal biases toward deep reading and teach skim reading in first-year writing courses. Written by Ellen C. Carillo, who has previously published on the importance of teaching deep reading, this small book is a controversial prompt for further discussion and exploration.

Data from studies of the lived experiences of undergraduates indicate that students do not need deep reading practices in the majority of their classes across the disciplines and, moreover, that students succeed in their classes by skim reading. Rather than imagining an idealized set of circumstances that allow for sustained deep reading, as does a great deal of the scholarship on reading in writing studies, The Radical Case for Teaching Skim Reading in First-Year Writing argues for teaching students reading practices that will support their success in their college writing assignments rather than those strategies the field believes should support their success.

In our information landscape and our fragile democracy, encouraging skimming as opposed to deep reading may seem like a gamble-this very tendency toward the quick rather than the critical has undoubtedly contributed to the current crisis of mass misinformation. However, teaching students to use skim reading as a strategic tool for purposeful engagement and efficient yet thoughtful information filtering better equips them to navigate the rapidly changing information landscape and manage the fast-paced flow of content from diverse media sources.

Ellen C. Carillo is professor of English at the University of Connecticut and the writing program coordinator at its Waterbury Campus. She is the author of Securing a Place for Reading in Composition, A Writer’s Guide to Mindful Reading, Teaching Readers in Post-Truth America, Reading and Writing Instruction in the Twenty-First Century, The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading, and the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy, as well as the coeditor of Teaching Critical Reading and Writing in the Era of Fake News and Reading Critically, Writing Well. Her scholarship has appeared in several journals and edited collections.