Introduction to the thesis

Dear Readers,

This is my thesis, a culminating experience of my undergraduate work at Michigan State University. I feel it is necessary to explain my journey to this thesis for two reasons. First, you get to know the person beyond the paper. Second, to welcome they that hesitate to do what I have done: try something new for the sake of passion and curiosity.

Until about a year and a half ago, I was resolutely an English Education Major. I did not do science or math; I passed my requirements and the most interaction I would have with the two in the future was baking in the kitchen. My niche was filled with graphic novels, Shakespearean plays, Norton Anthologies and worksheets I made for my imaginary classroom.

My stance as an academic would be profoundly shaken with one honors required course.  I took “Cognitive Science and the Literary History of the Mind” simply because it was the only class that could fit into my schedule. Feeling incredibly stupid surrounded by people double and triple majoring in Neuroscience, English, Microbiology or some combination thereof, I stuck out the class. With a patient professor (now a co-thesis director) and some serious googling of science terms, I found out that I like science. Well, specifically Cognitive Science. I listen to NPR science Fridays, read books entitled, “Proust and the Squid” and can explain to my cousin what is happening in her son’s dyslexic brain. Like so many others, I have been sucked into the complex mystery of the human brain by science and literature.

This thesis will combine my two passions, English Education and Cognitive Science. I made the choice to combine English and Education because, as we will see later, I use a neuroscientific experiment on reading to discuss the implication of the results on the teaching of reading. Thus, English Education. I believe that these two fields have a lot to offer to each other, thus my target audience for this thesis is both the neuroscientist and the secondary education teacher, the cognitive psychologist and the Jane Austen professor.

Before I delve into the analysis and meat of this paper, I want to first address the issue of combining education and neuroscience. After fleshing out the arguments, we move into the experiment itself, ORDER ORDER ORDER