"How Do I Read?"

        English 241 offers you a chance to explore your reading habits at fundamental levels, digging down below the conscious decisions you make when choosing texts, and operating them.  To establish a starting point for this exploration, and to help you get to know other members of the class as readers and writers, please give us a thoughtful, ungraded exploration of how you read.    You can address this question in many ways, and all will tell us something about your preferences and habits and training as a reader.  This is potentially a book-length (whatever that is?!) project, but feel free to limit yourself to an hour or so of reflective writing, though you can write more if you wish and have the time to do so.

        To give us all time to read each others' writing, please submit it to the online "GoucherLearn" discussion board for English 241 before 5PM Sunday of the weekend before classes begin.

        Some suggestions (not requirements!) that might get you started:

• Your Reading History: Do you remember learning to read, or early reading experiences that shaped your adult encounters with texts?  Do you associate reading with persons, events, social status, or politics in ways that might differ from other readers?  How may hard-cover books do you estimate that you currently own?  Are there any you consider especially valuable, whether for personal reasons or as "collectibles"?  How many paperback books do you estimate that you currently own?  Are there any you consider especially valuable, whether for personal reasons or as "collectibles"?
• Your Curent Reading Preferences/Habits: Do you read online texts like this one differently from the way you read print texts?  Are there any kinds of writing that you will not or even cannot (physically) read online, even if a digital copy is available?  Do you read printed books differently from the way you read handwritten manuscript texts?  Have you ever read a manuscript book?  Do you have strong preferences, positive or negative, about the kinds and appearance of the texts you read?  Do you read print newspapers, or do you get your "news" primarily or entirely via online media?  If you do not read "the news," do you have another source of information about recent events?  Do you own and use a tablet e-reader, either a dedicated device (Kindle, Nook, etc.) or a multi-purpose tablet that you use to read texts longer than one screen?  If so, do you value it more or less than, or the same as, the hard-cover or paperback books you own? When assigned to read texts for classes, do you first seek to find them online in some digital form, do you first try to find them in print, or do you have no preference?  When you choose to read for pleasure, do you first seek texts online in some digital form, or do you first try to find them in print, or do you have no preference?
• Your Predictions: What do you think will be the future of reading?  Once, written language did not exist.  Can you imagine circumstances in which it would disappear or become such a rare skill as to be irrelevant in human culture, and if so, what would replace it?

     Please do not be concerned that you will "do it wrong."  You cannot do it wrong.  The only error would be not to do it.