Further, as you read texts written for a particular course within a field of study, you will learn about and begin to develop ways for thinking, knowing, and doing work in that academic discipline, trade, or profession.

within a specific social and cultural situation.

First, all reading events involve a social context. Social interaction surrounds and influences interaction with a written text. Second, reading is a cultural activity. That is, reading has social uses which are an extension of people’s day-to-day cultural doings. And third, reading is a socio-cognitive process. Through learning to read and through reading itself, children learn culturally appropriate information, activities, values, and ways of thinking and problem solving.

This short article describes concepts that help college students understand reading as a social process, evaluate (self-assess) reading comprehension, and begin to adapt reading strategies to different types of college reading tasks.

they draw from their previous learning in other courses to develop specialized literacy skills and strategies that they apply to new reading, writing, and learning tasks in the same field.

Fundamentally, because each field of study has its own purposes, its own kinds of evidence, and its own style of critique, each will produce different texts,

Shanahan

shared vocabulary with specialized terms

use written texts to create knowledge and communicate with each other

rules and expectations

Each academic or professional field is a community with unique ways of reading, writing, and learning.

Disciplinary literacy is a term for describing the specialized knowledge and skills that advanced learners and experts develop within a field of study

General Academic Literacy Strategies: Questions for Reflection and Writing

informal outline

asking self-quizzing questions while reading

previewing a textbook chapter to understand how it is organized

examples

general academic literacy strategies

technology

cross-cultural communication

quantitative

Chinatown itself was moved about a mile north to make way for Union Station; in the early 1950s, the city, promising to build affordable housing, forcibly removed Latino landowners from nearby Chavez Ravine, only to give the land to the newly arrived Dodgers for a baseball stadium; later, Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of Victorian homes and diverse populations, was razed to make way for a district of (still partially vacant) skyscrapers and the Frank Gehry–designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.