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Reading Rhetorically, brief edition
by John C. Bean,Virginia A. Chappell, and Alice M. Gillam. New York: Pearson Education, 2004. 169 pp.
Reading Rhetorically is an innovative rhetoric/reader that demonstrates the teaching of English as scholarship. By making the theories of Kenneth Burke and the strategies of Peter Elbow accessible, this text shows students how English scholars work while initiating critical student dialogues at the cutting edge of our field. In one dialogue, Reading Rhetorically dispels the notion that readers "digest" and "regurgitate" knowledge from texts-a notion also rejected by most two-year college composition instructors (28). Instead John Bean, Virginia Chappell, and Alice Gillam present Burke's conversation metaphor and Elbow's writing strategies inviting students to join the ongoing process of making meaning by reading and writing rhetorically (16).
Building on Burke's metaphor, Reading Rhetorically supplies rich readings, in poetry and professional and academic texts, followed by focused journal questions and small-group discussionsall designed so students explore concepts associated with constructing meaning. One concept, that reading is "a dynamic two-way interaction" of meaning making, is explored through Thomas Lux's...