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Beyond Words: Reading and Writing in a Visual Age: John Ruszkiewicz, Daniel Anderson, Christy Friend

Beyond Words is making an unabashed effort to be engaging to young adults and does so by rearticulating the discussion of academic analysis in a language and format that may be appealing to a college freshman.

Chapter one focuses on teaching the students to read texts critically, but does so by posing a series of informal questions in an attempt to make the process of critical reading appear in more a familiar aspect to students. The questions for critical reading are: “What do you see?”, “What is it about?”, “To what does it relate?”, “How is it composed?” and “What details matter?”(19, 26, 29, 33, 40). These questions are followed by explanations about how to answer in ways that will be fruitful for facilitating the student’s participation in a serious examination of a text. The student is then made to practice answering these questions in the ways that the book proscribes to familiarize them to this recurring mode of analysis, continually reprised in the subsequent chapters of the book, except for chapter two.

As chapter one was concerned with teaching students to read critically, chapter two focuses on how the student can write effectively. This, too, is explained in the context of a series of repeating questions, each of which is explained in detail after. These questions are: “What’s it to you?”, “What do you want to say about it?”, “Who will listen?”, “What do you need to know?”, “How will you do it?”, and “How well does it work?” (51, 54, 57, 60, 64, 71). Similar to the critical reading questions, these are repeated throughout the text as the students are assigned writing projects. However, because of its emphasis on students composing based on a series of question, this text seems less interested in the organic nature of composition.

The remaining chapters are separated by writing functions: “Expressing Identity”,” Writing to Describe Landscapes and Environments”, “Writing to Tell Stories”, “Writing to Inform and Explain”, “Writing to Analyze” and “Writing to Advocate and Persuade”. The diversity of these topics allows the focus to shift between pedagogical agendas and allows students the possibility of writing in a variety of genres in one book.

In addition to the assortment of writing topics, each chapter presents an assortment of texts to read, from film, photographs, web pages, bumper stickers etc. to traditional written texts. In the reading of these various texts the student is prompted with the questions for critical reading established in Chapter One. However, instead of taking the student through the whole series of reading questions with one text, usually each text is discussed in conjunction with a single question. As the selections viewed within each chapter are related to meta-issues of writing, this variety may be helpful for creating a more holistic view of analysis, however could prevent in-depth thinking about each one.

The assignments at the end of Chapters 3-8 are generally of two types. The first type of assignment asks the students to create a text based on the characteristics that they have discovered in each chapter, in this case only the writing question series is utilized. The second asks for a more full-scale analysis of one or more texts within the context of the chapter topic incorporating both reading and writing questions. These assignments explore various degrees of unconventional media, for example, in Chapter Three, Writing to Express Identity, the student is assigned to make a collage exploring their identity.

In addition to the fuller assignments at the end of each chapter, simpler, more class-period acceptable assignments are interspersed throughout. These small assignments range from Consider, which asks students additional questions about a specific text; Compose, in which the students are given brief writing prompts; and Challenge, which requires more in-depth thinking about a topic/outside research.

At the end of the chapters, the text cuts to an ‘interlude’ showing lengthier examples of the topic discussed in the chapter, usually presented in a way to appeal to college freshman age group followed by Challenge prompts.

Instead of containing lists of writing tips on style and construction, this book has them interspersed throughout at what it considers opportune moments. However if one is not assigning the entire textbook, or if students have writing assignments before certain tips are covered, valuable information is sometimes hidden.

The text attempts to situate the student in a cultural/personal perspective to the texts and offers a constructivist method of compiling information and composing writing. Because of the various styles of writing that it portrays, it avoids a solely argument-based (war-like) approach, instead, inviting students to try to synthesize understandings.

The numerous illustrations break up the text on the pages, as not to seem intimidating to new academics. Though this initially makes the book look a bit incoherent, the comprehensively repeated questions and assignment prompts provide a structured way of viewing each section. The language is, likewise, probably trying to appeal to the student with phrases like “playing it cool” and off-handed references to the OC (17). However, because students may see this as a gimmicky attempt to gain ‘street cred’, it may ultimately hinder its relatability.

Because of the large extent of separation between writing topics /styles into different chapters, this textbook doesn’t offer extended assignments or seem conducive to a semester- long class theme. However the first two chapters, in introducing a student-accessible way of reading and writing texts, in conjunction with a specific chapter topic may be very relatable to a larger, semester-sustain discussion, especially as these are neither clichéd in topic or text selection.