Should We Still Teach Close Reading?

Tim Shanahan 

Blast from the Past: The Common Core State Standards introduced the idea of “close reading,” in elementary reading instruction. I wrote a version of this entry on June 18, 2012, hoping to explain a concept that was new to many puzzled teachers. Since then, some states have revised or replaced their English Language Arts standards, which has shifted attention away from close reading. This blog entry represents an extensive revision of the earlier version.

The Common Core State Standards encouraged teachers to engage students in “close reading.” Not surprising, I received lots of letters asking me to define or explain what close reading is.  

The idea of close reading is to make sense of a text – to figure it out, to solve it like a problem. As such, close reading requires a substantial emphasis on guiding readers to read high-quality texts, texts with a lot of depth.

This "figuring out" is accomplished entirely by reading and discussing the text itself. Accordingly, teacher provided information or textbook commentary is minimized. You want as little between the reader and the text as possible.

Because challenging texts do not give up their meanings easily, it’s essential that readers re-read such texts. Of course, not all texts are worth the trouble of close reading.

Close reading requires that readers accomplish a series of goals.

One way to think about close reading is as a series of readings or rereadings (Adler & Vand Doren, 1972), each with its own goal.

So, a first reading has the goal of determining what the text says. It’s purely an issue of reading comprehension. If the text is a story, then students should be able to retell the plot. If the text is a science chapter, then readers should be able to summarize the text and answer questions about its key ideas and details. This is where reading comprehension instruction has traditionally stopped.

A second reading has a different goal: readers must understand how the text worked. How did the author organize it? What literary devices were used and how effective were they? What was the quality of the evidence? If data were presented, how was that done? Why did the author choose this word or that word? Was the meaning of a key term consistent or did it change as one progressed through the text?

This second reading might be a total re-reading or a partial and targeted re-reading of key portions, but it would not be aimed at determining what the text said – that would have already been accomplished by this point.

The value of this rereading may be more obvious with some texts than others. For instance, when one reads a political speech or a persuasive essay, it can be worthwhile to analyze the word choices and types of evidence upon which the author has depended. This can facilitate a critical examination of the ideas, and a grasp of why the text may be convincing.

Or, in a piece of literary fiction it may allow the reader to gain an understanding of how the beauty or power of the text was achieved. The author’s diction may imply important information about a plot or character. Of Mice and Men includes the following description: “Lennie dabbled his big paw in the water.” Paw is a synonym for hand, of course, but why that synonym? (It seems to say Lennie is like a large gentle animal, and there are other examples in the text that reinforce and extend this idea).

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