Annotated Pages and Informal Reading Response Evidence (below)
I believe that the way I approach active and critical reading is very common, but it greatly serves the purpose of allowing me to create a conversation with the chosen text. Before I would start marking the reading, I would give the text a quick scan to see what I was getting in to beforehand. Then I usually attempt to have a sort of argument with the writer if I disagreed with their ideas or write about things that stood out to me if I agreed with the writer’s ideas. In the case of Yo-Yo Ma’s “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education”, I agreed with his ideas for the most part and my annotation show this trend very clearly. If you look at the first picture of my annotations on the blog post above, you will notice that I use words and phrases like “yes”, “I agree”, and “true”, to show that I agree with the writers ideas. Sometimes, if necessary, I would write a small summary of that passage or an explanation of why I agree. However, I also show that I disagree with Ma’s ideas in my annotations on the same picture as mentioned previously. Like I do with my agreement statements, I would sometimes write a small summary or an explanation of why I said this, but I would also include a possible solution to the problem I think is posed by the reading. Both of these tactics of creating a conversation with the reading definitely assisted me in become a better active reader and it enhance my ability to pick a side with relation to the main ideas of the selected reading. Susan Gilroy gives us some tip in “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard”, stating “Make your reading thinking-intensive from start to finish. Annotation puts you actively and immediately in a ‘dialogue’ with an author and the issues and ideas you encounter in a written text. It’s also a way t have an ongoing conversation with yourself as your move through the text and to record what that encounter was like for you”. I feel that I do succeed in creating a dialogue with the author and the issues or ideas that are posed in their writings. I believe that my ability to “interrogate texts” as Gilroy states in her title, is very strong and I think that it has helped me find possible arguments to create with the texts that further developed my arguments or claims that became the centerpieces for my essays. Finally, listening and participation in class discussions of the reading would sometimes cause me to rethink my ideas that I previously believed in, as hearing my peers’ ideas gave me a new perspective on the topics discussed in the readings. Learning Outcome 3 says that I should be able to “Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning and thinking”. I believe that I have done a great job at successfully employing those techniques. Overall, I believe that my active and critical reading skills have improved as the semester has progressed and I am at a level that I am confident will assist me in future readings.
