Archive for July 2011
READING TO RESPOND TECHNIQUE
July 30, 2011 | 
Author Our personal response to a text as a critical reader is the second component of a critical, comprehensive reading. If our reponses are to be informed, we must understand what we have read, which is why our first job is to understand. The overall goal of reading to respond is to identify and explore our reactions to a text. More specifically, these goals are as follows:
- Reflect on our experiences and associations with the topic of a text, i.e. know what you feel about a text and know your emotional response.
- Let the text challenge you.
- Use the text to spark new, imaginative thinking.
We can achieve the goals of reading to respond when we approach a text with a set of questions that continually returns our focus to us and our reactions. Here is a sampling of such questions:
- Which one or two sentences did I respond to most strongly in this text ? What was my response ? Explore our reasons for being excited, thoughtful, surprised, or threatened. Keep the focus on us.
- What is the origin of my views on this topic ? If we are reading on a controversial topic, explore where and under what circumstances we learned about the topic.
- If I turned the topic of this text into a question on which people voted, how should I vote and why ? Try getting involved with the text by locating a debate in the text and by taking sides.
- What new interest, question, or observation does this text spark in me ? Use a text to spark our own thinking. Let the text help us pose new questions or make new observations. Use the text a basis for speculation.
Posted in 
Tags: 
READING TO UNDERSTAND TECHNIQUE
Every use to which we can put a source is based on our ability to understand it. Without understanding we can do nothing, and so understanding must be our very first goal as a critical reader. The steps in reading to understand can be summarized as follows:
- Identify the author’s purpose. This will likely be to inform or to argue.
- Identify the author’s intended audience. The text will be written with particular readers in mind. Determine if we are the intended audiences.
- Locate the author’s main point. Every competently written text has a main point that we should be able to express in our own words.
- Understand the strusture of the text. If the author is arguing, locate the main point and supporting points. If the author is presenting information, locate the main point and identify the stages into which the presentation has been divided.
- Identify as carefully as possible what we do not understand.
When we know that we must base later writing on a source we are reading, we should consciously adopt a system for reading to understand. There are many systems you can follow, but each commonly entails reading in three stages:
- Preview. Skim the text, reading quickly both to identify the author’s purpose and to recall what we know about the topic.
- Read. Read with pen in hand, making notes about the content and the structure of the text. Stop periodically to monitor our progress.
- Review. Skim the text a second time to consolidate our notes. Jot down questions and hightlight especially important passages.
BE A CRITICAL READER
Especially in college, our success as a writer will require that we be an effective reader. To be an effective reader, we have to try to develop habits of mind that prompt us to think critically about what we read. “Critical” in this sense does not mean negative, but rather active and alert. Critical habits include being alert to similarities and differences; posing questions; setting issues in broader contexts; and forming and supporting opinions. Developing the habits of a critical thinker will prepare you for working with the source materials on which we will base much of our writing.
Those habits mentioned above prepare us in a general way for thinking critically about what we see and hear. Noting differences, challenging and being challenged by sources, setting issues in a broader context, and forming and supporting opinions, these habits of mind, so important to thinking critically, do not necessarily lead to formal statements on our part about the materials we encounter.
When teachers and, later, employers ask that we read and use source materials as a basis for writing, we will need to formalize and systematize our critical thinking skills. A close, critical reading requires that we have the skills of reading to understand, reading to respond, reading to evaluate, and reading to synthesize as appropriate to our task.
To a greater or lesser extent, we will naturally mix into a single reading the tasks of reading to understand, to respond, to evaluate, and to synthesize. The goal of a close, critical reading is to make sure we perform these tasks well. To do so, even the most experienced readers find they must read a text or two more times. Reading and rereading are the habits that we must have to achieve the goal.