COMM 223: Reading assignments and strategies for October

Now that midterms are over, we're changing gears. In the coming weeks, we'll be studying the way jazz originated in the African American community, especially around New Orleans; became popular nationwide with a predominantly white audience; took on some of the attitudes and practices of art music (what we sometimes call "classical" music) as it lost popularity with mass market audiences; and eventually turned into an upscale niche genre with fewer but perhaps more dedicated listeners. We'll see the same thing happening with blues by semester's end.

We'll be reading Vera Lee, "The Black and White of American Popular Music from Slavery to World War II." And I'll be assigning you a paper, due at the end of the month, in which you react to your reading. I'll give you a detailed assignment sheet in the next few days, but in the meantime here's the overall topic of your paper:

As jazz evolved from its roots in folk music and gospel, it gained something and lost something as it reached the wider audience of popular music in the heyday of Dixieland and swing during the 1930s and 1940s. As it evolved further into bebop and modern jazz, it took on some of the attributes of art music, and again it gained something and it lost something. Be ready to discuss what happened to the music as a form of artistic expression as it was commercialized and later reinvented as art music. What, specifically, did it gain? What did it lose? What, specifically is your reaction as a listener to those changes?

In class, we'll listen to some of the music Vera Lee mentions in the book. So you'll want to follow the discussion in your reading. (I hope you've been picking up on my hints to keep reading it, so you don't get behind.) Since you're essentially reading the book so you can quote it in a written assignment, you can read it more quickly than you would a math or biology textbook. For some of you, this may be a new kind of reading ... it's more like what you'll be doing as you choose a major and take more upper-division courses in your major. It's also more like the reading you'll do when you're in grad school.

So at the risk of insulting your intelligence, I'm going to give you some reading tips in class today from the resource centers at Virginia Tech, Dartmouth College and Harvard University.

Virginia. Ivy League. It doesn't get much better than that. If strategic reading works for them, it can work for us.

The first strategy is called "SQ3R." I'll link you to a good summary from Virginia Tech. It stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review. I'm not sure the exact order of the three "R's," because in my classes I like to streamline it and only read the material once because we're going to come back to it when it's time to write the papers. Instead, I circle keywords, make notes in the margin and mark important passages with a paper clip (yes, a paper clip!) so I can find it quickly when I need it.

The second comes in an essay by Martha Maxwell of the Academic Skills Center at Dartmouth College. It's on Dartmouth's webpage titled Reading Your Textbooks Effectively and Efficiently tells you how to read strategically. Scroll down past the SQ3R summary, and click on "Six Reading Myths." Here's the key to it:

Good reading is selective reading. It involves selecting those sections that are relevant to your purpose in reading. Rather than automatically rereading, take a few seconds to quiz yourself on the material you have just read and then review those sections that are still unclear or confusing to you.

The most effective way of spending each study hour is to devote as little time as possible to reading and as much time as possible to testing yourself, reviewing, organizing, and relating the concepts and facts, mastering the technical terms, formulas, etc., and thinking of applications of the concepts-in short, spend your time learning ideas, not painfully processing words visually.

We'll look at it in class. Let's also open up the "Harvard Reading Report." It suggests how first-year students at Harvard University are taught to get the most out of their reading:

The exercise of judgment in reading requires self-confidence, even courage, on the part of the student who must decide for himself what to read or skip. Dr. Perry [of the Harvard Reading-Study Center] suggested that students ask themselves what it is they want to get out of a reading assignment, then look around for those points. Instructors can help them see the major forms in which expository material is cast. Students should also "talk to themselves" while reading, asking "is this the point I'm looking for?"

And that, in a nutshell, is why I'm assigning a paper on Vera Lee's "Black and White." It gives you that point you're looking for.