Active Reading
I became an active reader this semester. The third learning outcome for English 110 is the ability to “employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.” I demonstrated my newfound active reading skills while reading and annotating Brandt’s work (Full Page Annotations 4). My first annotation of the fourth page says “by nature, sponsors typically have selfish motives”. This was me simply summarizing a paragraph so I would be able to skim Brandt’s essay quickly when I needed to go back and extract quotes from it. This annotation is an example of me learning through active reading because I was able to understand a concept enough to put it into my own words. Answering informal reading response questions was a very easy way to determine if I had done a good job active reading. When answering questions about Gee’s idea of Discourse, I had to reread many parts of the passage again to compile an answer. It was hard for me to think of how I use Discourses in my own life because I hadn’t read closely enough. I eventually understood and was able to make a text to self connection between my Christmas dinners growing up and the usage of Discourse. Throughout this class, I became good at self-critiquing my own active reading by answering informal reading response questions. Unlike the learning outcome, Susan Gilroy actually describes specific ways to get the most out of active reading in her work “Interrogating Texts: 6 Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard.” She encourages students to “set course readings against each other to determine their relationships.” I did this while I was annotating a student literacy narrative (Full Page Annotations 2). I used definitions set by other authors (Alexander, Brandt, and Wiley) to describe parts of Farrell’s literacy narrative. Combined, these examples of active reading show that I’m able to make text-to-text connections, text-to-self connections, and learn from passages.
