Chapter Nine

The Contour and Substance of Meaning

This chapter starts with an article from the New York Times by David Remick from January 29, 1996. It is, might I say, an article not in the least bit interesting to me or to the author except for the fact that she was considering using it as an introduction to a chapter in this particular book on synthesis. After discussion with her co-author, they decide to use it to make a point. She states that as she read this particular article she was synthesizing during and after reading it. However, due to her experienced reading ability the synthesis didn’t come without the result of other comprehension strategies that she used as she read. It was composed of a myriad of tiny mental pieces that formed a mosaic of understanding of the text.
She continues to say that she wasn’t summarizing the article in her mind, for summarizing would be highlights of the text: a listing of parts whereas synthesis is the creation of a whole. Synthesis is the process of ordering, recalling, retelling and recreating into a coherent whole the information with which our minds are bombarded every day. Synthesis is a uniquely human trait that permits us sift through a myriad of details and focus on those pieces we need to know and remember. Synthesis is about organizing the different pieces to create a mosaic; a meaning. This is a process that we all engage in naturally every day.
The author now realizes that synthesis is absolutely basic. We must reorganize and create our own explanations for what we are learning, our own definitions of our lives at any particular point in time.

Some Key Ideas
The process of synthesizing occurs during reading:

v Proficient readers maintain a cognitive synthesis as they read. They monitor the overall meaning, important concepts and themes in the text as they read and are aware of ways test elements fir together to create that overall meaning and theme. A proficient reader’s synthesis is likely to extend the literal meaning of a text to the inferential level.
v Proficient readers are aware of text elements and patterns in fiction and nonfiction and understand that being aware of them as they read helps them predict and understand the overall meanings or themes.
v As they read, proficient readers attend more directly to character, setting, conflict, sequence of event, resolution, the theme in fiction and to text patterns such as description, chronological, cause and effect, comparison/contrast and problem/solution in nonfiction. The use this knowledge to make decisions about the overall meaning of a passage, chapter, or book.
v Proficient readers actively revise their cognitive syntheses as they read. New information is assimilated into the reader’s evolving ideas about the text, rendering some earlier decisions about the text obsolete.

The process of synthesizing occurs after reading:
v Proficient readers are able to express through a variety of means, a synthesis of what they have read. The synthesis includes ideas and themes relevant to the overall meaning from the text and is cogently presents.
v Proficient readers use synthesis to share, recommend, and critically review books they have read.
v Proficient readers purposefully use synthesis to better understand what they have read. Syntheses are frequently an amalgam of all comprehensions strategies use by proficient readers.

Barbara Stala