In Christina Hass’s opening statement, she talks about what becoming literate is at the college level. By this, she means that in college, a textbook becomes more than just a text. Hass states that “Disciplinary texts, like all texts, are intensely situated, rife with purpose and motive, anchored in myriad ways to the individuals and the cultures that produce them,” (Hass 44). Here she is explaining how even in academic writing, there is a purpose to it. To become literate, you need to analyze what the purpose is of the writing instead of just reading it as informative text.

Hass writes about a larger problem with students being unable to recognize the deeper enrichment of texts. There is a myth that “the belief in autonomous texts views written academic texts as discrete, highly explicit, even ‘timeless’ entities functioning without contextual support from author, reader, or culture,” (45).  This myth does make sense to me and I can resonate with it. Through my high school years of countless texts I had to read, I would skim it and read for an informative purpose instead of realizing the why and the bigger picture.

Hass’s study on Eliza through her four years of college proved that change does happen. Hass states “She exhibited a growing cognizance of texts (and the science they report) as the result of human agency” (69). Through her four years, her style of reading had changed, but in her junior year, it had changed drastically. This shows that this might also happen to other throughout their college years but only if they work hard and have other influences as well.

Hass explains a method to help understand the text more openly, she calls it rhetorical reading. She introduces a rhetorical frame, which “helps readers account for the motives underlying textual acts and their outcomes” (48). The rhetorical frame helps readers understand the bigger picture by acknowledging the relationships and motives in the text and by the author.

Gee and Hass both discuss a form of discourse in their articles. In Haas’s article, Learning to Read Biology, she uses discourse in the terms of academic reading. But she also mentions how many theories are trying to understand the nature of different situations including discourses. She states in her article, “… concerned with the nature of social, communicative acts and how individuals participate in and understand those acts” (47). This statement relates to Gee’s definition of Discourse. He states it’s like an identity kit, and that its comprised of skill, knowledge, and tools to get someone to be something. Both ideas of discourses are relative to the same components and require skill and knowledge.

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