Complex Texts

 Reading is an activity that envelops almost every facet of our lives. It is a skill that we use not just to interpret written text in to language, but to analyze many different forms of information that we are receiving while working with texts. Whether the text is in the form of an image, a film clip, a song or speech, or written words, students need to be able to draw upon their literacy skills to take a deeper look into the possible meanings and information buried in it. A large step in students developing these skills is the transition from, as Buehl puts it, “learning to read, to reading to learn” as they enter into middle and high school. The reason middle and high school are important times for this transition is because that is the time period where most students start to receive more complex texts.

What I mean by a complex text is, a text that requires the reader to become more active and also challenges their literacy skills because of the skills required to accurately interpret it. A complex text also has six key characteristics outlined by The American College Testing Program. According to these characteristics a texts relationships between ideas should become less obvious, the richness if details in the text should increase, such as, the introduction of visual text integrated with written text, text structure that does not directly express the argument or ideas of the text to the reader, the style of the text is written in a more mature style, the vocabulary becomes increasingly more difficult, and lastly the reader must be made to interpret the author's purpose. Some examples of complex text that might appear in the classes a typical high school student attends could be a journal article in his or her science class, a primary source document in his or her history class, or a classic novel in his or her english class. Each of the texts would definitely cover each of the six key characteristics of a complex text and require that the student to participate more actively in the process of reading; however each of these text would also present their own set of potential problems for the student because each text has its own discourse. 

A discourse is an accepted use of language that typically employs a prescribed pool of vocabulary. (Gee 1996) To put it more plainly, each area of study has a certain set of vocabulary words that are specific to it, and the meaning of words may differ from one subject area to another. For example the word kingdom means two completely different things depending on whether you are looking at it through the lense of a historian or a scientist.Students are outsiders to many of these discourses which tends to hinder the students ability to interpret complex texts, and each discourse contains its own specific set of challenges. I'll use science and history as examples.

While reading science texts students may encounter problems with an over flow of new vocabulary words and previously mentioned terms that they are expected to make connections with, a lack of assumed prior knowledge, the use of academic language which may feel uninviting or complex, and the inability to successfully transition between and combine written language and visual representations, such as graphs, to see the big picture. Many science teachers may avoid the challenge of teaching students to engage with text because they may not understand how to teach it, and the end up just relaying information from the text to their students which makes the student dependent on their teacher for scientific information, instead of the student actively participating in their learning experience. (Buehl 2011) In the video below Shelia Banks demonstrates how teachers can help students can develop their literacy skill in science class.

In a history class, students face similar problems that a student in a science class would, in terms of vocab and prior knowledge, but the main problem with complex texts in a history class room is how students analyze the text and information they are given compared to how a historian analyzes texts and information. When a historian reads a historical text they are looking for how and why a historical event took place, which forces them to read into the material more deeply, and helps them develop their own understanding of an event. When students read a historical text they are usually looking for the who, what, and when of an event. This leads the students to only read historical documents at a surface level and it leads them to see history as a set of facts that need to be memorized instead of a series of arguments and debates. The solution to this problem is to teach student s to read text through the lense of a historian. The video below gives an overview of how teachers can help students achieve this goal.