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The debate over the merits of nonfiction versus fiction in today's English classrooms represents, to some, a debate about whether genre is truly a means to an end. One issue that contributes to this dilemma is the question of student (or teacher) preference. Does not imaginative prose "speak" to students-through its power of story-to access habits of mind in ways that nonfiction struggles to? Indeed, does not the "story-truth," to paraphrase Tim O'Brien, allow readers to see matters more clearly than the "happening truth"?
Another obstacle to reconciling this debate is the end-game of many secondary English curricula: the culmination in two distinct Advanced Placement English examinations. In May 2015, close to one million students took one of these exams, and preparation for the AP English Literature exam-a course devoted to the tenets of fiction-and preparation for the AP English Language exam-devoted to the tenets of nonfiction-further illustrate traditional stances about the relationship between genre and outcomes.
The Common Core State Standards' recommendation to dramatically increase the percentage of nonfiction reading experiences only furthers the argument that such a move for an English classroom constitutes a sacrifice. (Another response is that nonfiction can and should be subsumed in curricula outside of English.)
To be sure, good reading is good reading, and to suggest that students' literacy skills will suffer because they experience a higher dose of fiction at the expense of nonfiction-or vice versa-is a specious argument. Inferential reading, analysis, synthesis, evaluation: all these skills apply across genres.
Rather, what we may consider is how the genre of nonfiction is more conducive to the development of key skills, chief among them being rhetorical analysis and argument. More than skills articulated by Common Core or Advanced Placement, these skills are conducive to the value of informed citizenship, or, to paraphrase Wayne C. Booth, the study of rhetoric becomes an alternative to violence. Figure 1 reflects how reading rhetorically, combined with argumentative writing, results in informed citizenship.
Reading Rhetorically-Understanding Context
The fundamental difference in the reading experience between fiction and nonfiction focuses on context-the conditions that have necessitated the creation of said text. In the world of nonfiction, context appears as such in Figure 2, known as Aristotle's rhetorical triangle. We call this the rhetorical situation.
In...