from Judith McDaniel

I am always amazed when I give someone a direction that seems perfectly clear to me and I get an email back asking the same question or asking a follow up question that tells me my answer wasn’t read or that only the first of three steps was followed. It happened again this morning.  I gave the directions, he couldn’t make it work.  I gave them again, he is out of town…

I teach.  I pride myself on being clear when I give directions or ask questions.  It is something I’ve had to learn and practice over and over.  It is essential to what I do.  But I am only half of the equation.  The person receiving the direction is the other half.

I know what it’s like. We all get so much email, have access to so much information.  Reading everything that comes just in email would ensure I never did anything else in a day. I teach my students how to skim the index of a book when they don’t have time to read the entire text to find information they can use.  The same skill lets us do an online search.  Only 35,000 responses in 1.2 seconds to my search.  I’m surely not going to read even the first 100.  Refine the search, limit, narrow.  Now I’m down to only 8,000 websites to check.

Close reading

So I understand skimming.  But what about close reading? When I’ve asked a question, isn’t there some Emily Post manual that tells me I should slow down and read the answer?  It’s more than etiquette. For a student, reading the directions is survival—and their grades depend on it.  So I may have to add a “when not to skim” chapter to my “how to skim” lecture