Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.
Prompt: Read the brief selection from Susan Gilroy and the learning outcomes for English 110 found on the reverse of this page. Treat Gilroy’s selection, Learning Outcome 3, and both the chosen Course Reading Annotation Pages and Informal Reading Response Evidence as your sources. Write about your own approach to active, critical reading (about 250-450 words). Explain your reading practices in the chosen evidence, making sure to engage Gilroy’s ideas and the third learning outcome. What are your annotating and informal responding approaches? How did you decide what to mark or discuss? What might this tell you about your ability to “interrogate” readings, as Gilroy puts it in her title. You will likely also draw from the ways your class has discussed and practiced active, critical reading. Title this section of your statement Learning Outcome 3.
When reading and annotating a piece of literature, I approach this task in a haphazard type of way. For example, in Hal Herzog’s “Animals Like Us” article, I would read through the article, marking things in the columns and high-lighting certain phrases or quotes that seemed significant or bizarre. In one instance, I marked a whole section of this piece because, to me, it seemed extremely important. It was a story that referred to Herzog’s old friend who had to perform neurological experiments on kittens. This was significant because I noticed that it could potentially be used as a counterargument in a future piece. Another way I annotate and critically read a piece is sometimes by reading a piece or section multiple times. Most often, it is me trying to go back and focus on what I am reading, but other times it is me trying to understand what the author is trying to explain. In David Foster Wallace’s piece “Consider the Lobster” he leaves us questioning our motives at the end. This prompted me to reread the piece to understand what his motives were, but it was quite difficult based on his writing style. This also tells me how I approach my critical reading style. I have to reread things multiple times to understand a topic; and, it requires me to read things all at once. Having a gap in time before discussing a topic we read can leave me confused and questioning some of the things I read. What this tells me about my “interrogating” technique is that is sort of random, but it has a purpose. By questioning and going back to things multiple times, it allows me to analyze different parts and discover the motive for the piece overall. Going off of that, while reading the piece provided Susan Gilroy, I noticed that many of the things she talks about are things that I try to execute while annotating or critically reading things. In one instance, Gilroy states, “Take the information apart, look at its parts, and then try to put it back together again in language that is meaningful to you.” This example is pretty important when breaking down a work of literature we are tasked to annotate and read. By taking the piece apart, it really helps you get down to the entire motive of the piece. Gilroy’s piece overall was interesting because it made me realize that the things I do when reading are at quite a high level, and it also gave me some new ways to read an article or novel, like how to question what the reader is actually asking rather than what it says on the paper.
In certain cases, I wouldn’t annotate as much to signify that there was not many important facts in that specific section.
