After listening to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” Ted Talk, I realize how easily and ignorantly we generalize groups of people just by knowing one side of the story or, in other words, a single story. Based on my understanding of Adichie’s speech, a single story is a one-sided ignorant view of an individual or ethnic group. In other words, it is the generalization of an individual just by associating a dreadful comment of someone to everyone just like Adichie says in the following quote “show a people as one thing, as only one thing. Over and over again”. A good example of this is the following statement: nowadays we see on the internet many people from East Asia eating animals alive such as newborn rodents, which is cruel, and many of us generalize this concept with all of the people from this region. This is very ignorant because not all of them do this. Another example is people thinking that everyone from the Dominican Republic (my country) are colored skin. Not everyone in the Dominican Republic is colored skin and it makes me feel sad when people don’t believe me that I am Dominican because they say “You are too white”. I love my country and I am very proud of it and it hurts me to see this type of comment. Growing up I used to read many stories of aerospace, astronauts, and in school many fictional stories, which I was forced to read but they had amazing messages and lessons. One of the books that portrayed, unconsciously, a single story like Adichie stated. This happened 10 years ago and the book was The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (Cajas de cartón) by Francisco Jimenez. This book is an autobiographical novel based on the journey from Mexico to the United States of America by Francisco Jimenez (The author) when he was a child. The author shows how he lived in big poverty and states that he and his family used to sleep on cardboard boxes when they arrived to the USA. They had a very difficult life. This made me feel big sorrow and pity for him and all the immigrant families that come from Mexico to the USA. Unconsciously this created a very ignorant single story in my mind that all Mexican immigrant families were very poor people. After a few years, I learned the hard way that fortunately, not all Mexican immigrants had such bad luck and that not all of them are poor. I think modern technology does contribute to creating all of these single stories. For example, I was once watching a documentary on African tribes with a friend of mine and we were seeing how primitive these tribes lived. My friend commented that all African people behave this way and were very primitive and “primal”. I corrected him and said that many African countries are actually very advance with high human development. However, people that watched such documentaries and don’t have a big understanding of them will conclude that Africans are primitive people that live wildly.

My name is Brianna (she/her), and I was born and raised in Staten Island.  This is my second year at City Tech, finishing my prerequisites for my Radiology Technologist major. In my spare time I am learning how to sew with a sewing machine and listening to true crime podcasts.

One of the three takeaways from these articles was from Karen Rosenburg, in regards to not being the primary audience. Oftentimes when a text is more scholarly I struggle to remain focused on the subject. Rosenberg reminds us that those articles are not written with the intention of entertaining and captivating your attention.  “ Second, if you’re not the primary audience, don’t be surprised if you find that the writing isn’t appealing to you.” (Rosenburg).

In How to Read Like a Writer, Mike Bunn my second takeaway was that if the author’s choices are identified in the text you can better understand the kind of choices that may come up in your own writing.  When you are reading you are also learning about how to write. “The idea is to carefully examine the things you read, looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same) techniques in your writing.” (Bunn, 72).
Another helpful takeaway from Bunn is asking questions related to the context of the author’s writing. The author’s purpose for writing the piece and the intended audience of the piece should be considered before it is read to help understand the intent of the author. While reading the text will most likely be necessary to figure out the answers to these questions, an attempt can still be made with the title and publishing information.

When Rosenberg writes about reading academic texts as entering a conversation she means putting the text into your own interpretation and using your own words to describe the text. The key points to describe the text are the purpose and audience.The reader is supposed to analyze the information in the writing and ask yourself questions about it. You can have a conversation with a text by expressing your opinion or thoughts about the texts in academic. A conversation could also start with your professor or peers to gain a different perspective and broaden your beliefs. Professors assign reading not solely because of the assignments, they enjoy the texts that they are reading.

According to Bunn before you begin reading a text, the reader should consider the context of the assignment, as well as the text. The ways this can be learned is by asking questions like what the genre is or the author’s purpose of the piece or intended audience. Knowing who the text was written for and what the intended purpose is can help you to understand the author’s writing choices.The genre can help you to figure out the author’s purpose and even the title of the text could be beneficial in helping a person to understand what it is about before they even begin reading.

In both readings by Karen Rosenberg and Mr Bunn the reading comprehension is essential to understanding what the author wants to relay to the readers. For example, in Reading Like a Writer the article quotes “Author David Jauss makes similar comparisons when he writes that “reading won’t help you much unless you learn to read like a writer. You must look at a book the way a carpenter looks at a house someone else built, examining the details in order to see how it was made’.” Similar to Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources Karen Rosenberg states that reading strategies are important in order to comprehend what you are reading. A reader must ask questions like, why am I reading this article? Why was it assigned? What am I suppose to learn from this text? In order to comprehend we must be reading detectives similar to what Bun states in his text.

As a reader I always look for that introduction and the hook to seek the main idea of the text or reading. My favorite read are informative articles that enhance my knowledge and seek a deeper understanding, but in order to read and comprehend I must ask myself why, what does the author want me to learn from the reading.  When reading for a class, it imperative that readers ask clarifying question. That is key to successful reading, especially when reading for content. As a reader I want to know what is the reading mostly about, and what key terms should I know. If I am reading  a text on democracy then I should know exactly what it means and the text should begin with a quote on democracy and the importance of democracy.  Deep readers and thinkers should always question the who, what, when, where, and why they are reading the text.  In Strategies for reading Scholarly Sources by Karen Rosenberg she states that instead of focusing on the reason why one is reading the text instead we should be questioning or looking for clues in a professors syllabus or lecture. Also the the “Strategies for Rhetorical Reading”  one must consider who is the intended audience and what group of people they are writing for. For example,  a doctor that writes about heart disease with terminologies, he is targeting potential cardiologist, but if they are writing an article about heart disease and awareness then the intended audience is broader. Also, as Karen Rosenberg stated if you want to understand the text don’t overlook the hook to get to the meat (Main Idea) of the story.

Excellent reading and writing skills are basic requirements for students across all the faculties. In both readings, the authors of the texts cement the significance of developing reading and writing skills in different ways. In his article, Bunn provides insightful ideas about the art of reading and writing by Bunn. From the article, it is evident that reading should help one to develop writing skills by emulating how writers sum up their pieces of work. The author challenges the primary intention of readers which is usually to comprehend the text and instead suggests that reading should bolster our writing by Bunn. On the other hand, from the article by Rosenberg, it is clear that reading is a form of communication. That is particularly true because the writers write their work with their readers in mind by Rosenberg. A reader can converse with written texts by challenging the reasoning of their writers, their choices of writing, or through rhetorical writing initiated by the writer.

Before reading a text, readers could know the context of the written work by comprehending the purpose of the author’s writing. For instance, by asking themselves why and for who was the work written, readers could develop the context of the writings by Bunn. Additionally, the choice of words and quotes authors apply could tell the context of their writing by Bunn. For instance, readers can tell the scope of a written work by examining the reputation of characters included by the authors in their work. In the articles, both authors have used a formal tone which is manifested by their respect in communicating about the reading and writing aspects to the audience.