Chapter 2:

College reading is active reading.

What is active reading?

Active reading simply means reading something with a determination to understand and evaluate it for its relevance to your needs.

Before you read, you must do two things!

When you begin to read, ask questions like these about your immediate purpose:

Begin with your available resources:

Annotating the Text

Writing notes on the page is a useful way to trace the author’s points, question them, and add your own comments as they pop up.

When you annotate a reading you must..?

Chapter 2:

The Reading Process

Generating Ideas from Reading

Strategies?

Recalling Something You Have Already Read.

Looking for Meaty Pieces.

Reading Critically

Logging Your Reading.

Paraphrasing and Summarizing Complex Ideas.

Reading on Literal and Analytical Levels

Educational expert Benjamin S. Bloom identified six levels of cognitive activity.

Reading Deeply

College assignments often require more concentration than other readings do.

Gaining Background.

Knowing a reading’s context, approach, or frame of reference can help you predict where the reading is likely to go and how it relates to other readings.

Skimming the Text.

Before you actively read a text, skim it — quickly read only enough to introduce yourself to it. If it has a table of contents or subheadings, read those first to figure out what it covers and how it is organized.

Read the first paragraph and then the first (or first and last) sentence of each paragraph that follows. Read the captions of any visuals.

Do the syllabus, schedule, and class notes reveal why your instructor assigned the reading? What can you learn from reading questions, tips about what to watch for, or connections with other readings?

Does your reading have a book jacket or preface, an introduction or abstract that sums it up, or reading pointers or questions?

Does any enlightening biographical or professional information about the author accompany the reading?

Can you identify or speculate about the reading’s original audience based on its content, style, tone, or publication history?

Responding to Reading

You may be accustomed to reading simply for facts or main ideas.

However, critical reading is far more active than fact hunting.

What does it require?

It requires responding, questioning, and challenging as you read.

Critical readers do three things:

They get ready/prepare to do their reading.

When reading critically, one must integrate new information with existing knowledge and apply it to problems in daily life.

They respond as they read.

They read on literal and analytical levels.

Getting Started

Preparing to Read

Reading Strategies

Do you need to be ready to discuss the reading during class?

Will you need to mention it or analyze it during an examination?

Will you need to write about it or its topic?

Do you need to find its main points? Sum it up? Compare it? Question it? Spot its strengths and weaknesses? Draw useful details from it?

When you begin to read, ask questions like these about your immediate purpose:

Thinking about Your Purpose

When you begin to read, ask questions about your immediate purpose:

What are you reading?

Why are you reading?

What do you want to do with the reading?

What does your instructor expect you to learn from the reading?

Do you need to memorize details, find main points, or connect ideas?

How does this reading build on, add to, contrast with, or otherwise relate to other reading

assignments in the course?

Think ahead about how to approach the reading process.

Determine how to make the most of the time you spend reading.

Each level acts as a foundation for the next. Each also demands higher thinking skills than the previous one.

Reading critically means approaching whatever you read in an active, questioning manner.

Planning Your Follow-Up

• knowledge
• comprehension
• application
• analysis
• synthesis
• evaluation.

What does it mean to read

critically?

College reading is complicated.

Reading on Literal and Analytical Levels

Literal vs Analytical Skills

Challenging material often requires closer, slower reading and deeper thinking.

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