Reading Complex Texts to Build Skills
AVID Center
Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 8:32AM
By Gordon Mosher, Program Manager, AVID Western Division, AVID Center
Just as a bodybuilder only builds muscle when lifting weights, a reader only builds ability to understand complex texts when reading complex material. One of our AVID Staff Developers from Australia, Dr. William DeJean, demonstrated this idea during a recent AVID training in San Diego for Summer Institute Staff Developers. “Learning to read challenging text is similar to undergoing physical therapy. Initially, such therapy is often painful and exhausting, and it’s tempting to cheat on the exercises a bit” (Shanahan, Fisher, & Frey, 2012, p. 62). In order to increase our students’ abilities to comprehend college-level reading material, we must expose them to rigorous text early. By doing so, we can develop a set of skills for students to apply whenever they are challenged by a text.



