Teachers who call attention to the choices authors make as they write also help students identify with publishing authors and help students to see themselves as able to exercise choices. Next, teachers should plan writing tasks for readers which will enhance their reading. Many expert readers rely on notational strategies, marginalia, or reflective comments in logs or journals to help them focus on complex selections. Research suggests that these are worthwhile activities if students know how to do them and if they are appropriate to the reading task. Conversely, note-taking and skills sheets which serve merely to check that reading has been done and do not further the reader's struggle with the text impede reading.
Writers read voraciously for information.
They probe texts to understand how certain styles are achieved. Studies involving even very young children document the myriad of uses young writers find for what they are reading. A learner is only a partial biologist, for instance, if he cannot read or write to discover information and meaning in biology. When a student takes the results of his or her observations about lobsters, reads, writes a draft, talks, reads, then writes again, he or she learns what it is to think critically as a biologist. Composing and Comprehending .