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Berea Writes!: Chapter 1 Critical Reading

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Chapter 1 Critical Reading
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“Chapter 1 Critical Reading” in “Berea Writes!”

Chapter 1 - Critical Reading

Regardless of your intended field of study, L&I 100: Explorations & L&I 200: Discoveries are intended to hone your writing, reading, and critical thinking skills to give you a solid foundation for success in your major, your career, and in your personal life. In this chapter, you will learn about the concept of critical reading and why it is an important skill to have not only in college (over the next few years, you’ll read textbook chapters, lab manuals, and academic journal articles), but also in everyday life (at work, you may read project proposals or expense reports; at home, you may read books and news reports).

This chapter will cover reading, note-taking, and writing strategies for when it’s necessary to use reading texts for homework assignments, to prepare for class discussions, and to prepare for writing tasks.

1.  What expectations should you have for reading and writing in college?

2.  What is critical reading?

3.  Why do we read critically?

4.  How do we read critically?

4.1 Preparing for a Reading Assignment

4.2 Establishing your Purpose

4.3 Right Before you Read

4.4 While you Read

4.5 After you Read

5.  Now what?

1. What expectations should you have for reading and writing in college?

In college, academic expectations change from what you may have experienced in high school. The quantity of work expected of you increases, and the quality of the work also changes. You must do more than just understand course material and summarize it on an exam. Professors will expect you to engage seriously with new ideas by reflecting, analyzing, critiquing, making connections, drawing conclusions, and finding new ways of thinking about them. Educationally, you are moving into deeper waters. Learning the basics of critical reading and writing will help you swim.

Figure 0.1 "High School versus College Assignments" summarizes some of the other major differences between high school and college assignments.

High School

College

Reading assignments are moderately long. Teachers may set aside some class time for reading and reviewing the material in depth.

Some reading assignments may be very long. You will be expected to come to class with a basic understanding of the material.

Teachers often provide study guides and other aids to help you prepare for exams.

Reviewing for exams is primarily your responsibility.

Your grade is determined by your performance on a wide variety of assessments, including minor and major assignments. Not all assessments are writing based.

Your grade may depend on just a few major assignments. Most assessments are writing based.

Writing assignments include personal writing and creative writing in addition to argumentative writing.

Outside of creative writing classes, most writing assignments will ask you have a main claim and defend it with support and research.

The structure and format of writing assignments is generally stable over a four-year period.

Depending on the course, you may be asked to master new forms of writing and follow standards within a particular professional field.

Teachers spend a lot of time each week with the students in class. Teachers often go out of their way to identify and try to help students who are struggling on exams, missing classes, not turning in assignments, or facing difficulty understanding course material. Teachers often give students many “second chances.”

Although professors want their students to succeed, they may only spend a few hours a week with their students in class. Professors may not always know when students are struggling. Professors typically expect students to be proactive and take steps to help themselves. “Second chances” are less common.

2. What is critical reading?

Reading critically does not simply mean being moved, affected, informed, influenced, and/or persuaded by a piece of writing; critical reading refers to analyzing and understanding the overall composition of a piece of writing as well as how the writing has achieved its effect on the audience. This advanced level of understanding begins with thinking critically about the texts you are reading. In this case, “critically” does not mean that you are looking for what is wrong with a work (although during your reading process, you may well do that). Instead, “thinking critically” means analyzing a text to find what lies beyond its surface meaning.

Tip:

A text is simply a piece of writing, or as Merriam-Webster defines it, “the main body of printed or written matter on a page.” In English classes, the term “text” is often used interchangeably with the words “reading” or “work.” Because many of the strategies that we use to read are also useful when looking at art, watching a movie, or listening to a podcast, you may hear your teacher refer to all of these kinds of materials as “texts” even though some are not verbal or written down.

Consider this example: Which of the following tweets below are critical and which are uncritical?

Figure 0.2 “Lean In Tweets”

A screenshot of a social media post from Twitter/X.

@helveticas: I just finished #LeanIn by Sheryl Sandberg. Would love to know what y’all think about it!

@graineod: Lean In sinpried me to seek out mentors in my profession.

@iamonlyoneme95: This book revitalized my sense of purpose. I am inspired! #LeanIn

@annaobanna: I think real-life situations experienced by working moms she uses to illustrate some of her points make the book relatable to a side audience

@billie_tennant: she convinced me that I have been holding myself back at work!

@justharoldjha: Sheryl Sandberg is a Harvard-educated woman in a business run by her family. How much does her book apply to women without that level of privlege?

3. Why do you read critically?

Critical reading has many uses. If applied to a work of literature, for example, critical reading can become the foundation for a detailed textual analysis. With scholarly articles, critical reading can help you evaluate their potential use as future sources. Finding an error or missing perspective in someone else’s argument can be the entry point you need to make a worthy argument of your own. Critical reading can even help you hone your own argumentation skills since it requires you to think carefully about which strategies are effective for making arguments. In an era where fake news and AI-generated writing abounds, critical reading can also help you become more aware of how texts may be attempting to influence you in potentially unethical ways.


4. How do you read critically?

How many times have you read a page in a book, or even just a paragraph, and by the end of it thought to yourself, “I have no idea what I just read; I can’t remember any of it!”? Almost everyone has done it, and it’s particularly easy to do when you don’t care about the material or if the material is full of difficult or new concepts. If you don’t feel engaged with a text, then you will passively read it, failing to pay attention to substance and structure. Passive reading results in zero gains; you will get nothing from what you have just read because while your eyes are passing over a text, your mind is not engaged in processing that text.

On the other hand, critical reading is based on active reading because you actively engage with the text, which means thinking about the text before you begin to read it, asking yourself questions as you read it as well as after you have read it, taking notes or annotating the text, summarizing what you have read, and, finally, evaluating the text. Completing these steps will help you to engage with a text, even if you don’t find it particularly interesting, which may be the case when it comes to assigned readings for some of your classes. By taking an actively critical approach to reading, you will be able to do the following:

  • Stay focused while you read the text
  • Understand the main idea of the text
  • Understand the overall structure or organization of the text
  • Retain what you have read and be ready to use it in class for discussions, quizzes, and exams
  • Pose informed and thoughtful questions about the text
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of ideas in the text

Some specific questions can guide your critical reading process. Use them when reading a text, and if asked to, use them in writing a formal analysis. When reading critically, one approach is to begin with broad questions and then work towards more specific questions.

Figure 0.3 “Example Questions to Ask a Text”

Example Questions to ask a text, organized from big-picture issues to small details.

  1. What general issue/topic does the writer cover?
  2. What is the writer’s thesis/main argument?
  3. What reasons and evidence does the writer present to support and develop their main argument?
  4. How does the writer organize their reasons and evidence throughout the argument?
  5. What kind of sentence-level writing choices (e.g., word choice, sentence structure, level of formality) does the writer make?

4.1 Preparing for a Reading Assignment:

You should make a plan before you read. Just as you wouldn't want to jump into dark water head first before knowing how deep the water is, how cold it is, or what might be living below the surface, you want to have some idea of what you’re getting into with a reading.

Planning Your Reading

Have you ever stayed up all night cramming just before an exam? Or found yourself skimming a detailed memo from your boss five minutes before a crucial meeting? The first step in successful college reading is planning. This involves both managing your time and setting a clear purpose for your reading.

Managing Your Reading Time

This step involves setting aside enough time for reading and breaking assignments into manageable chunks. If you are assigned a seventy-page chapter to read for next week’s class, try not to wait until the night before it’s due to get started. Give yourself at least a few days and tackle one section at a time.

The method for breaking up the assignment depends on the type of reading. If the text is dense and packed with unfamiliar terms and concepts, limit yourself to no more than five or ten pages in one sitting so that you can truly understand and process the information. With more user-friendly texts, you can handle longer sections—twenty to forty pages, for instance. And if you have a highly engaging reading assignment, such as a novel you cannot put down, you may be able to read lengthy passages in one sitting.

As the semester progresses, you will develop a better sense of how much time you need to allow for reading assignments in different subjects. Early on, you may want to time yourself as you read so that you can better estimate how long you’ll need for future reading assignments.

4.2 Establishing your Purpose

It doesn’t take more than a few moments but having a clear sense of your reading purpose is important for college-level reading. Establishing why you are reading something helps you decide how to read it, which saves time and improves comprehension. This section lists some purposes for reading as well as different strategies to try at various stages of the reading process.

Purposes for Reading

People read different kinds of texts (e.g., scholarly articles, textbooks, reviews) for different reasons. Some purposes for reading might include the following:

  • to scan for specific information
  • to skim to get an overview of the text
  • to relate new content to existing knowledge
  • to write something (often depends on a prompt)
  • to discuss in class
  • to critique an argument
  • to learn something
  • for general comprehension

Reading strategies will differ from reader to reader and context to context. Ask yourself “why am I reading?” and “what am I reading?” when deciding which strategies work best

Tip: Skimming

To skim a text means to glance over it briefly to get the gist or overall idea it conveys. When skimming, pay attention to these key parts:

  • Title
  • Introductory section
  • Topic sentences of body paragraphs
  • Conclusion section
  • Bold or italicized terms
  • Images or figures

Reading as a Reader & Reading as a Writer

In your first-year writing courses at Berea College, you will need to become adept at reading two ways at once: as a reader and as a writer. When reading as a reader, your main goal is to understand the meaning of a text, to make sure that you comprehend it and could accurately describe it to a friend. When reading as writer, your main goal is to understand and evaluate the writing “moves” an author makes. Since you’re working this year on becoming a stronger writer, you should approach every text you read with an eye toward writing strategies that you find particularly effective (and ineffective) so that you can “steal” those strategies (or avoid them) in your own writing.

4.3 Previewing the Text

Once you have established your purpose for reading, the next step is to preview the text. Previewing a text involves skimming over it and noticing what stands out so that you not only get an overall sense of the text, but you also learn the author’s main ideas before reading for details. Because previewing a text helps you better understand it, you will have better success analyzing it.

Questions to ask when previewing may include the following:

  • What is the title of the text? Does it give a clear indication of the text’s subject?
  • Who is the author? Is the author familiar to you? Is any biographical information about the author included?
  • If previewing a book, is there a summary on the back or inside the front cover of the book?
  • What main ideas emerge from the first and last paragraphs of the text?
  • Are there any organizational elements that stand out, such as section headings, numbering, bullet points, or other types of lists?
  • Are there any editorial elements that stand out, such as words in italics, bold print, or in a large font size?
  • Are there any visual elements, such as photos or illustrations, that give clues as to the topic?
  • Finally, speculate and make some guesses:
    • What do you think the author’s aim might be in writing this text?
    • What sort of questions do you think the author might raise?

4.4 While you Read:

Improving Your Comprehension

Thus far, you have blocked out time for your reading assignments, established a purpose for reading, and previewed the text. Now comes the challenge: making sure you actually understand all the information you are expected to process. Some of your reading assignments will be fairly straightforward. Others, however, will be longer and more complex, so you will need a plan for how to handle them.

For any nonfiction, informational writing your first comprehension goal is to identify the main points and relate any details to those main points. Because college-level texts can be challenging, you should monitor your reading comprehension. That is, you should stop periodically to assess how well you understand what you have read. Finally, you can improve comprehension by taking time to determine which strategies work best for you and putting those strategies into practice.

Identifying the Main Points

In college, you will read a wide variety of materials, including the following:

  • Textbooks. These usually include summaries, glossaries, comprehension questions, and other study aids.
  • Nonfiction trade books. These are less likely to include the study features found in textbooks.
  • Popular magazine, newspaper, or web articles. These are usually written for a wide readership.
  • Scholarly books and journal articles. These are written for an audience of specialists in a given field.

Regardless of what type of text you are assigned to read, the primary comprehension goal is to identify the message: the main point that the writer wants to communicate, often stated early on in academic texts. Finding the main point gives you a framework to organize the details presented in the reading and to relate the reading to concepts you learned in class or through other reading assignments. After identifying the main point, find the supporting points: the details, facts, and explanations that develop and clarify the main point.

Some texts make that task relatively easy. Textbooks, for instance, include the aforementioned features as well as headings and subheadings intended to make it easier for students to identify core concepts as well as the hierarchy of concepts (working from broad ideas to more focused ideas). Graphic features, such as sidebars, diagrams, and charts, help students understand complex information and distinguish between essential and inessential points. When assigned a textbook reading, be sure to use available comprehension aids to help you identify the main points.

Trade books and popular articles may not be written specifically for an educational purpose; nevertheless, they also include features that can help you identify the main ideas. These features include the following:

  • Trade books. Many trade books include an introduction that presents the writer’s main ideas and purpose for writing. Reading chapter titles (and any subtitles within the chapter) provides a broad sense of what is covered. Reading the beginning and ending paragraphs of a chapter closely can also help comprehension because these paragraphs often sum up the main ideas presented.
  • Popular articles. Reading headings and introductory paragraphs carefully is crucial. In magazine articles, these features--along with the closing paragraphs--present the main concepts. Hard news articles in newspapers present the gist of the news story in the lead paragraph, while subsequent paragraphs present increasingly general bits of information.

At the far end of the reading difficulty scale are scholarly books and journal articles. Because these texts are written for a specialized, highly educated audience, the authors presume their readers are already familiar with the topic. The language and writing style is sophisticated and sometimes dense.

When you read scholarly books and journal articles, try to apply the same strategies discussed earlier. Many articles open with an abstract that efficiently summarizes the whole text. The introduction usually presents the writer’s thesis, the idea or hypothesis the writer is trying to prove. Headings and subheadings can reveal how the writer has organized support for his or her thesis. If the text contains neither headings or subheadings, however, then topic sentences of paragraphs can reveal the writer’s sense of organization.

Annotating a text means that you actively engage with it by taking notes as you read, usually by marking the text in some way (underlining, highlighting, using symbols such as asterisks) as well as by writing down brief summaries, thoughts, or questions in the margins of the page. If you are working with a textbook and prefer not to write in it, annotations can be made on sticky notes or on a separate sheet of paper. Regardless of what method you choose, annotating not only helps you stay focused on what you read, but it also helps you retain that information. Furthermore, it makes it much easier for you to recall where important points are in the text if you must return to it for a writing assignment or class discussion.

Tip: Annotating

Annotations should not consist of JUST symbols, highlighting, or underlining in a text. Successful and thorough annotations should combine those visual elements with marginal notes and written summaries; otherwise, you may not remember why you highlighted that word or sentence in the first place. Be selective about what you mark; if the whole page is highlighted, annotations lose their meaning.

How to Start Annotating:

  • Underline, highlight, or mark sections of the text that seem important, interesting, or confusing
  • Use symbols to represent your thoughts
    • Asterisks or stars might go next to an important sentence or idea
    • Questions marks can indicate a point or section that you found confusing or questionable in some way
    • Exclamation marks could go next to a point that you find surprising
  • Abbreviations can represent your thoughts in the same way symbols can
    • For example, you may write “Def.” or “Bkgnd” in the margins to label a section that provides definition or background info for an idea or concept
    • Think of typical terms that you would use to summarize or describe sections or ideas in a text, and come up with abbreviations that make sense to you
  • Write down questions that you have as you read
  • Identify transitional phrases or words that connect ideas or sections of the text
  • Mark words that are unfamiliar to you or keep a running list of those words in your notebook
  • Mark key terms or main ideas in topic sentences
  • Identify key concepts pertaining to the course discipline (i.e.--look for literary devices, such as irony, climax, or metaphor, when reading a short story in an English class)
  • Identify the thesis statement in the text (if it is explicitly stated)
  • In one color pen, make annotations of what you notice as a reader (e.g., new information you learn, something that surprises you, key sub points of the text). In another color pen, make annotations of what you notice as a writer (e.g., a particularly interesting turn of phrase, an impressive metaphor or choice of word).

Links to sample annotated journal article and book chapter excerpt

Figure 0.4 “Sample Annotated Emily Dickinson Poem”

Sample Annotated Emily Dickinson Poem

A typed Emily Dickinson poem with handwritten marks and annotations all around it.

Figure 0.5 “Sample Annotated Walt Whitman Poem “The Dalliance of the Eagles”

Sample Annotated Walt Whitman Poem “The Dalliance of the Eagles”

A printed Emily Dickinson poem with handwritten marks and annotations all around it. A typed Walt Whitman poem with handwritten marks and annotations all around it.

For three different but equally helpful videos on how to read actively and annotate a text, click on one of the links below:

  • “How to Annotate”
  • “5 Active Reading Strategies”
  • “10 Active Reading Strategies”

But wait! Don’t forget to personalize your annotations. The above strategies are great ways to get started, but the best way to develop a rich annotation practice is to decide who you are, why you are reading, and what annotation practices will best support your developing thoughts on a text. Highlighting is useless if you still can’t remember what you read and use it in class or in your paper. Would it be more helpful for you to:

  • Write your personal responses (even negative ones like “Lies! All lies!”) to the text as you read?
  • Draw pictures that help you remember concepts more concretely (useful for the sciences and philosophy)?
  • Create a single-page summary of a longer reading so you can refer it later as a resource?

If you’d like to see more ideas, check out Writing Resources’ Notetaking Tipsheet to see one writer try out several different styles on a single reading.

4.5 After you Read:

Once you’ve finished reading, take time to review your initial reactions from when you first previewed the text. Were any of your earlier questions answered within the text? Was the author’s purpose similar to what you had speculated it would be?

Next, follow up the reading by taking the steps outlined below. These steps will help you process what you have read so that you can move onto the next step of analyzing the text.

  • Summarize the text in your own words (note your impressions, reactions, and what you learned) in an outline or in a short paragraph. Cornell Notes can be a good way to start creating summary documents that can be used later for class discussion or studying (see Notetaking tipsheet in previous section for an example of Cornell notes).
  • Talk to someone, like a classmate, about the author’s ideas to check your comprehension
  • Identify and reread difficult parts of the text
  • Review your annotations and ensure that they not only summarize but also include your responses, reactions, and questions as a reader.
  • Try to answer some of your own questions from your annotations that were raised while you were reading
  • Define words on your vocabulary list (try a learner’s dictionary) and practice using them

Critical Reading Practice Exercise:

Choose any text that that you have been assigned to read for one of your college courses. In your notes, complete the following tasks:

1. Follow the steps in the bulleted lists beginning under Section 3, “How do we read critically?” (For an in-class exercise, you may want to start with “Establishing your Purpose.”):

  • Before you read: Establish your purpose, preview the text
  • While you read: Identify the main point of the text, annotate the text
  • After you read: Summarize the main points of the text in two to three sentences, review your annotations

2. Write down two to three questions about the text that you can bring up during class discussion. (Reviewing your annotations and identifying what stood out to you in the text should help you figure out what questions you want to ask.)

Tip: Seeking help is normal.

Students are often reluctant to seek help. They believe that doing so marks them as slow, weak, or demanding. The truth is, every learner occasionally struggles. If you are sincerely trying to keep up with the course reading but feel like you are in over your head, seek out help. Speak up in class, schedule a meeting with your instructor or TA, or visit Writing Resources or Disability and Accessibility Services for assistance.

Address the problem as early in the semester as you can. Instructors respect students who are proactive about their own learning and will work hard to help students who make the effort to help themselves.

5. Now what?

After you have taken the time to read a text critically, the next step, which is covered in the next chapter, is to analyze the text rhetorically to establish a clear idea of what the author wrote and how the author wrote it, as well as how effectively the author communicated the overall message of the text.

Key Takeaways:

  • College-level reading and writing assignments differ from high school assignments not only in quantity but also in quality.
  • Managing college reading assignments successfully requires you to plan and manage your time, set a purpose for reading, practice effective comprehension strategies, and use active reading strategies to deepen your understanding of the text. If you are prepared to use the text again later in class discussions, essays, quizzes, and exams, you’ll know your reading strategies are working.
  • Finding the main idea and paying attention to textual features as you read helps you figure out what you should know. Just as important, however, is being able to figure out what you do not know and developing a strategy to deal with it.
  • Textbooks often include comprehension questions in the margins or at the end of a section or chapter. As you read, stop occasionally to answer these questions on paper or in your head. Use them to identify sections you may need to reread, read more carefully, or ask your instructor about later.
  • Even when a text does not have built-in comprehension features, you can actively monitor your own comprehension. Try these strategies, adapting them as needed to suit different kinds of texts:
  1. Summarize. At the end of each section, pause to summarize the main points in a few sentences. If you have trouble doing so, revisit that section.
  2. Ask and answer questions. When you begin reading a section, try to identify two to three questions you should be able to answer after you finish it. Write down your questions and use them to test yourself on the reading. If you cannot answer a question, try to determine why. Is the answer buried in that section of reading but just not coming across to you? Or do you expect to find the answer in another part of the reading?
  3. Do not read in a vacuum. Talk back to the text; don’t be afraid to challenge ideas or look up new information in your annotations to keep yourself engaged. Look for opportunities to discuss the reading with your classmates. Many instructors set up online discussion forums or blogs specifically for that purpose. Participating in these discussions can help you determine whether your understanding of the main points is the same as your peers’.
  • Class discussions of the reading can serve as a reality check. If everyone in the class struggled with the reading, it may be exceptionally challenging. If it was easy for everyone but you, you may need to see your instructor for help.

CC Licensed Content, Shared Previously

English Composition I , CC-BY 4.0, by Lumen Learning.

Rhetoric and Composition, CC-BY-SA 3.0 by Rhetoric and Composition Wikitext Staff

Successful Writing, CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0, written by Scott McLean, Arizona Western College.

Image Credits

Figure 0.1 "High School versus College Assignments" based on High School Versus College Assignments, Successful Writing, CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0.

Figure 0.2 “Lean In Tweets”, CC-O, by Virginia Western Community College.

Figure 0.3 “Example Questions to Ask a Text”, CC-O, by Virginia Western Community College.

Figure 0.4 “Sample Annotated Emily Dickinson Poem” CC-O, by Virginia Western Community College.

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