Project 2

Intro

Which one do you find easier to understand... A history paper or a gossip magazine? A math project or a research about your favorite subject? For many people the answers may vary, some may say they prefer the math project, some others may say that they prefer a science paper, and all of this happens because people have different areas of interest. Something interesting that people doesn't know about these different areas is that they affect they meaning they give to the readings.
To prove what It is just said, I will make an experiment about how interest affects the way we give meaning to things. In the experiment I will hand some papers to people and I will ask them to read them, after that I will ask them some questions about them and with they answers, I will prove that interest affects the meaning we give to things.
Something that you may have not notice when you are reading or learning something, is that when you have interest in something, you make your best to learn and understand. Let's set an example; Mary is a 10 year old girl and she is totally into math, she loves math, but she hates history, she can't even read a history paper without falling asleep. When you handle to her a math book she reads it in less than one hour, but when you handle to her a history book, she just can't read it because she things it is the worts thing on earth. Just by looking at this we could tell that she has great notes at math, but she doesn't to that well on history.
After you read this paper, you will change your perspective about subjects and your interest about school may change too, why not?

Lit review

When we read a text, we give our own meaning to it. We interpret the text the way we believe is better for us to understand it. This theory is also saying that if we create our own meaning of something, when you explain it to someone else and it is something that you really like, you may make the other person feel comfortable of what you are teaching to them, and maybe this could influde the meaning we give to a text. If a text is explained to you by someone close to you like your friend or boyfriend or whoever you will easily understand it, that's why I chose Gilliam. Gilliam talks about peer response and that kind of response is the one that we will be talking about later.
I also choose the article of haas and flower because It talks about rhetorical reading, and this kind of reading is exactly what I was looking for. Haas and Flower also talk about meaning, which is a very big part of the theory that I am proving. Because meaning is almost the main point of this theory, we will learn how it may be changed depending on the source we got our information from.


Connections


Audience is a big part of this project too. This work is all related to how we(audience) change the meaning of the reading depending on our interest on it. And this is shown on the articles I chose. They all talk about how the reading or information we get from something affect us. Haas and Flower for example, talks about reading and what good reading means. Good reading is a very important part of this, because good reading means that you completely understand what the author is trying to tell you. Good reading could be easily achieved when you have interest on what you are reading, and that's why I chose Haas and flower to complement my theory. Then I chose Gillam. Peer response is a very clear example about interest we give to the source we get our info from. They talk about how students interact with each other to get info. Some theories say that some students feel insecure about asking their teachers, and that's why they ask all their questions to their classmates, from this we could tell that they prefer getting meaning from something they considerate to be equal in some way to them, because in that way they won't feel so bad about not knowing something. So, students prefer getting info from their classmates rather than from their teachers, and they understand easily their classmates, because they are just like them and if they are just like them, they "talk the same language" what makes them feel secure. This kind of security could refer to interest. Maybe students have more interest in a handsome 17 year old guy or in a beautiful 16 year old girl than in a 40 year old man. Which is completely normal and because of this differences they interest more in the text or meaning they give, because the person teaching them is interesting to them. And finally those are the mainly reasons of why I chose those articles to complement and base my theory on.


Methodology.

The research tools I am using to prove my theory are interviews and experiments. They consist in some tests and questions that I did to a group of friends. First the experiment, which consists in giving some papers to people I know. Since I know them I know their likes and dislikes, so I gave them two texts, one about something interesting to them, and other about something they don't care about. After that I tested them, to know what they got from the text. Obviously what I got from the tests was what I was expecting , they answered correctly most of the questions from the tests about topics that they found interesting, and they didn't do that well on the tests about topics that they didn't care about or they found not interesting. Then I made the interviews, which consisted in some questions about books, reading, and interests, I found out that people did struggle with understanding a text about something they don't like, they have to read it again and again to completely catch up what the text is trying to say. I also found out that people completely understand a book that was chosen by them, for example if I chose a drama book and I like it, I will completely understand everything, because that is something that I like. But when I chose a fiction book and I don't like fiction, I won't care about it, because it is not what I am looking for in a text. I think that interviews and experiments are the perfect tools to prove my theory, because they gave me exactly the information I was looking for.


Research data
As it was said before, what I used as tools for my research, were interviews and experiments. In the 4 interviews I did I found out similar things, people don't really enjoy reading things they dislike, they also think that they need to read a text they dislike 2 or more times to completely understand it. I also found out that the comprehension changes when you read something you like. The experiments were about handing two kinds of papers; one interesting paper(which will be paper one) and a boring paper(paper two), to people I know they like the subjects the papers are about.

Research analysis

Conversation piece

I think that what I found in my research was what I was expecting. I was expecting that people do change ther comprehension when they are interested in something, rather than when they are not interested in the topic. This is because people is different and this is what makes them to think different about everything.



Gillam, Alice M. "Research in the classroom: Learning through response ." English journal . 79.1 (1990): 98-99.

Haas, Christina, and Linda Flower. "Rhetorical reading strategies and the construction of meaning." College composition and communication . 39.2 (1988): 167-183.