How First-Year College Students Read Popular Science : An Experiment In Teaching Media Literacy Skills

Over the course of three consecutive quarters during the 2000–2001 academic year, 63 students enrolled in an information literacy course at a western American public university were required to conduct a close reading of an article from Popular Science after preliminary instruction in key information and media literacy concepts. Students' responses to questions about (1) the nature of the information and documentation presented by the text, (2) the purpose and intended audience of the text, and (3) the authorship and point of view of the text were examined to see to what degree students were able to think critically about these articles. Findings suggest that, even after basic instruction in information and media literacy skills, many students have difficulties identifying problems (biases, authors' lack of credentials, lack of sources, etc.) with information resources largely because of the ways in which they typically misread texts and make mistaken inferences from them. This article provides quantitative and qualitative descriptions of students' misreadings and mistaken inferences; discusses possible explanations for students' difficulties in interpreting texts; and examines the implications of these difficulties for information literacy and media literacy education.