Readings in the Social Sciences

This course has been designed to give students who have already taken ESL 92 (“Foundations in Critical Reading”) the opportunity to respond to the challenges of reading advanced texts in the social sciences. The readings give students a grasp of major social issues that are presented in both academic frameworks and the public media. Students will respond to authentic reading materials presenting an overview of different viewpoints and including different styles and genres. As various topics are discussed in their specific sociocultural context, students will reflect on conflicting ideas and tensions. In addition to the selected readings, students will study a work of fiction or nonfiction during the semester that is related to a topic in the social sciences. Students will have completed a review of this work at the end of the semester. Students will also read a weekly selection from the New York Times, which reflects an idea presented in a reading discussed in class.Through the prism of the specific content of the course, students work on refining their reading skills. A conscious effort is made to improve students’ reading comprehension, while focusing on vocabulary development, reference building, past and present, and the critical thinking skills that are essential for success with the college reading experience. The following college-level pedagogical strategies are incorporated into the course curriculum:1. making students aware from the start that reading is a problem-solving process and key to their success in their college programs;2. exposing students to more complex prose so that they will acquire the higher-level vocabulary and advanced reading skills necessary to negotiate the more complex academic discourses they will encounter in the major content areas;3. learning skimming and scanning strategies;4. learning to anticipate outcomes and draw conclusions;5. learning to identify and build connections between central points, main ideas, and supporting details;6. learning to go from literal comprehension of texts to more interpretive, inferential reasoning;7. learning to differentiate between facts and opinions, purpose and tone; different rhetorical modes and text functions;8. learning to critically analyze maps, graphs and charts.9. learning to create outlines and summaries not only for written texts but also for maps, graphs, and charts; learning through the reading process how to become better writers; writing in response to reading.

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