Believing and Doubting Games in Reading
We read now from phones, computers, Nooks, wide screen color televisions, and movie screens as well as books and journals and much of our reading in school is for a pragmatic purpose.
For the purpose of this composition course we will use reading for inquiry (truth seeking) and persuasion (rhetoric).
After you have chosen a topic, or conversation, or have been assigned a conversation by your teacher your next task is to research that topic. You begin this process by seeking the truth about your topic, by inquiring, questioning, and exploring your topic. This involves finding, reading, and using as many sources or voices in the conversation as possible and exploring as many perspectives as possible. You should use a variety of sources that include but are not limited to newspaper articles, op-eds, magazine articles, blogs, posting to chat rooms, visual arguments, documentaries, and peer-reviewed journal articles.
The focus of this chapter is on reading the sources that you have found. I will be integrating methods and ideas included in the books Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings by John Ramage, John Bean, and June Johnson and Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow with methods and ideas that I use in my classes.
Methods of Reading
SkimmingSkimming is valuable when you are choosing your sources. It involves reading the abstract, the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and gliding or passing quickly through the body paragraphs.
Reading to find the truth about an issue
A good way of reading to explore and find the truth about an issue (inquiry) is by playing the believing and doubting game developed by Peter Elbow.
Believing Game
The believing game begins with what the psychologist Carl Rogers calls empathic listening. Empathy is the identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. This involves understanding and adopting the authors world view, beliefs, values, and assumptions. You must try to walk in the author’s shoes, understand the author’s angle of vision, see the world through his or her eyes. You must suspend your world view, which can be difficult, and hear what the author is saying. Peter Elbow says, “The itch for closure brings the itch for argument. Playing the believing game means fighting the itch for closure.” He goes on to say, “…most school activities—fulfill their goals perfectly if they slow down on generating final answers but speed up the business of making people more perceptive and intelligent. The shape of the believing game is waiting, patience, not being in a hurry. Try to feel how stupid this impulse is – how the desire for closure impedes any larger slower reordering of thought or experience and really serves the mind’s desire to stay the same.”
Close Reading and Summary Writing as a Way to Play the Believing Game
One way to play the believing game is to write an objective summary of the chosen piece of writing.
When you summarize a writing selection give the author(s) credit and respect for the work they have done to produce their product.
Follow these steps:
1. Read the argument slowly and objectively, playing the believing game. Pretend you are the author. Accept the author’s world view which involves the writer’s beliefs, values, and assumptions. You are engaged in empathetic listening not judging.
2. While you read the selection actively, underline important sentences, write notes in the margins, draw arrows and stars near passages that impress you or are exceptionally written.
3. Also while you read the selection carefully and slowly, write “says” and “does” statements for each paragraph on a separate piece of paper.
a. A says statement summarizes the content of the paragraph or main idea of the paragraph in your own words.
b. A does statement summarizes the paragraphs function. Does the paragraph state the main claim or present reasons or evidence? Does the paragraph address the opposition or conclude the argument? Does it use humor or quote another author?
4. Create an outline, idea map, or a list of the arguments main points.
5. Turn your paragraph by paragraph says statements and your outline into a prose summary. Write concise sentences, being objective, and identify the author’s main ideas, claims, and evidence. Properly document quotations and paraphrases. Create a works cited entry.
6. At this point you can trim and prune your summary to the desired length. Whether you decide to write a one page, one paragraph, or a one sentence summary use each word and sentence wisely. You will want to revise for conciseness.
Doubting Game
Reading to doubt involves raising objections, asking questions, being a sceptic, and withholding your belief. It is the heart of critical thinking. It can be as difficult as the believing game because it may go against the flow of your deeply held world views.The doubting game seeks truth by indirection – by seeking error. Doubting an assertion is the best way to find error in it. You must assume it is untrue if you want to find its weakness. The truer it seems, the harder you have to doubt it. Non credo ut intelligam: in order to understand what’s wrong, I must doubt.
To doubt well, it helps if you make a special effort to extricate yourself from the assertions in question – especially those which you find self-evident. You must hold off to one side the self, its wishes, preconceptions, experiences, and commitments. (The machinery of symbolic logic helps people do this.) Also, it helps to run the assertion through logical transformations so as to reveal premises and necessary consequences and thereby flush out into the open any hidden errors. You can also doubt better by getting the assertions to battle each other and thus do some of the work: They are in a relationship of conflict, and getting them to wrestle each other, you can utilize some of their energy and cleverness for ferreting out weakness.
Peter Elbow
In the doubting game a reader questions the writer’s logic, evidence, beliefs, values, and assumptions about what is true. A sceptic can also question an arguer’s rhetorical strategies and note what is not in the argument.
When you play this game write a paragraph believing the assertions the author makes and one paragraph doubting them. Free write both paragraphs or cluster (draw an idea map) of each before you write your paragraphs.
Dialectic Thinking
German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel claimed that each thesis has an opposing thesis or antithesis. The conflict created between these two opposing forces leads to a synthesis that combines both views. This is the philosophical equivalent of the believing and doubting game. When a reader does this, new better ideas emerge from the process.
Dialectic or dialectics (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments.
Questions to AskBecause it’s so hard to let go of an idea we are holding (or more to the point, an idea that’s holding us), our best hope for leverage in learning to doubt such ideas is to take on different ideas. Peter Elbow
1. How do the two arguers disagree about the facts and interpretation of facts?
2. How are their beliefs, values, and assumptions different?
3. Do they have shared beliefs, values and assumptions?
4. How have my own beliefs, values, and assumptions changed? Have I been exposed to new ideas? How have my views changed?
Three ways to help students to think dialectically are class discussions, journal writing about their views of their sources, and an exploratory essay in first person chronicling their intellectual journey through their sources and the world of the issue that they have chosen.
Rhetorical Reading
Rhetorical reading involves identifying the genre of the source, the author’s purpose and audience, as well as the author’s degree of advocacy in order to understand the author’s rhetorical situation.
Rhetorical Analysis is a good way to analyze the author’s rhetorical strategies
Rhetorical Analysis Worksheet
1. Who is the audience of this selection? Be as specific as possible. What are some of their values and beliefs? Remember, the ideal community of readers consists of people who are already interested in the topic or those people who could be persuaded to be. If the audience is a scholarly or scientific one, then what are their beliefs and values about the quality and research of the journal article. What is the name of the journal? What academic discipline would read this journal?
2. What is the structure of this selection? What is its arrangement of ideas? What is the organizational pattern?
3. What is the logical structure or Logos of this selection?
a. What is the source of disagreement?
b. How do the beliefs and values of the audience differ?
c. Many peer-reviewed journal articles or scientific case studies are organized around a statement of hypothesis which is a proposed explanation or conclusion that is usually either confirmed or denied on the basis of rigorous examination or experimentation later in the article. A hypothesis is a proposed answer to the research question.
1. What is the research question of the journal article?
2. What is the hypothesis?
3. What is the author’s main claim or conclusion? Be as specific as possible.
d. Ask yourself WHY the author believes this claim or conclusion.
Reason #1 Because____________________________________________________
Reason #2 Because_____________________________________________________
Reason # 3 Because_____________________________________________________
What type of evidence does the author use to support his or her claims?
Is the author’s use of logos effective? Why?
4. What is the context of this selection? What is the author’s purpose for writing it? What is the historical, social, or intellectual climate in which this piece was written? What is the larger issue in which this topic exists? Is there any mention of this topic in the mainstream media?
5. How does the author use Ethos or the appeals to credibility and authority? What credentials does the author have on his or her resume?
a. Does the author have knowledge of the topic he or she is writing about? How do
you know?
b. Is the author fair? Does the author address the opposition to his or her argument?
Does the author understand both sides of the issue?
c. Does the writer show concern for the values and beliefs of the audience? How? If it is a peer-reviewed journal article does the author(s) comply with the beliefs and values of his or her peer reviewers?
d. Is the author’s ethos persuasive?
6. How does the author use emotional appeals or Pathos? Does the author tell a story or give vivid examples? Summarize them. What specific emotions are involved?
Does the author use vivid language or style? Give examples of the author’s use of emotional language. Do you believe that the author’s use of pathos is effective?
7. Describe the author’s use of language or style.
8. Your evaluation claim: Use the information above to evaluate the effectiveness of the argument presented as a whole. Why do you believe the argument was effective? What do you believe the creator could have done to make the argument more effective?