Skim the Assigned Reading Material Minutes Before Reading

Introduction

Good researchers and writers examine their sources critically and actively. They do non but compile and summarize these inquiry sources in their writing, but apply them to create their ain ideas, theories, and, ultimately, their ain, new understanding of the topic they are researching. Such an approach means not taking the information and opinions that the sources contain at face up value and for granted, merely to investigate, test, and fifty-fifty incertitude every merits, every instance, every story, and every conclusion. It means not to sit back and let your sources control you, just to appoint in active conversation with them and their authors. In guild to be a proficient researcher and writer, 1 needs to exist a disquisitional and agile reader.

This chapter is about the importance of critical and active reading. It is also about the connection between disquisitional reading and agile, strong writing. Much of the give-and-take yous will detect in this chapter in fundamental to research and writing, no thing what writing genre, medium, or bookish subject field you read and write in. Every other approach to research writing, every other inquiry method and assignment offered elsewhere in this volume is, in some manner, based upon the principles discussed in this chapter.

Reading is at the centre of the research process. No matter what kinds of research sources and, methods you use, yous are always reading and interpreting text. Most of usa are used to hearing the word "reading" in relation to secondary sources, such as books, journals, magazines, websites, and and so on. But even if you are using other research methods and sources, such equally interviewing someone or surveying a group of people, you are reading. You are reading their subjects‟ ideas and views on the topic you are investigating. Fifty-fifty if y'all are studying photographs, cultural artifacts, and other not-verbal research sources, you are reading them, too by trying to connect them to their cultural and social contexts and to sympathize their meaning. Principles of critical reading which we are about to discuss in this chapter apply to those inquiry situations besides.

I like to think about reading and writing as not two separate activities merely as two tightly continued parts of the aforementioned whole. That whole is the process of learning and making of new meaning. Information technology may seem that reading and writing are complete opposite of one some other. According to the popular view, when we read, we "consume" texts, and when we write, we "produce" texts. But this view of reading and writing is true only if you see reading as a passive procedure of taking in information from the text and non every bit an active and energetic process of making new meaning and new cognition. Similarly, good writing does not come from nowhere just is usually based upon, or at least influenced by ideas, theories, and stories that come from reading. So, if, as a higher student, you accept ever wondered why your writing teachers accept asked you to read books and articles and write responses to them, information technology is considering writers who exercise not read and do not actively appoint with their reading, have picayune to say to others.

We will begin this chapter with the definition of the term "critical reading." We will consider its master characteristics and briefly touch upon ways to become an active and critical reader. Side by side, nosotros will discuss the importance of disquisitional reading for research and how reading critically can help you lot go a better researcher and brand the research procedure more than enjoyable. Also in this chapter, a student-author offers us an insight into his critical reading and writing processes. This chapter also shows how critical reading can and should be used for disquisitional and strong writing. And, as all other capacity, this one offers you activities and projects designed to assist you implement the advice presented here into practice.

What Kind of Reader Are Y'all?

You read a lot, probably more than that you recall. You read school textbooks, lecture notes, your classmates' papers, and class websites. When school ends, you probably read some fiction, magazines. But you likewise read other texts. These may include CD liner notes, product reviews, grocery lists, maps, driving directions, road signs, and the list tin can go on and on. And you lot don't read all these texts in the same way. You read them with different purposes and using different reading strategies and techniques. The first stride towards becoming a critical and active reader is examining your reading procedure and your reading preferences. Therefore, you lot are invited to complete the following exploration activity.

Writing Action: Analyzing your Reading Habits

Listing all the reading you accept done in the last week. Include both "school" and "out-of schoolhouse" reading. Attempt to list as many texts as you tin can think of, no matter how curt and unimportant they might seem. At present, answer the following questions.

• What was your purpose in reading each of those texts? Did you lot read for information, to pass a test, for enjoyment, to decide on a production you wanted to buy, and then on? Or, did you read to figure out some complex problem that keeps you awake at dark?
• Yous have probably come upwards with a list of unlike purposes. How did each of those purposes influence your reading strategies? Did yous take notes or try to memorize what you read? How long did information technology take you to read different texts? Did you begin at the starting time and read till you reached the end, or did yous scan some texts? Consider the time of day you were reading. Consider even whether some texts tired you out or whether yous thought they were "boring." Why?
• What did you do with the results of your reading? Did y'all utilise them for some applied purpose, such as buying a new production or finding directions, or did you employ them for a less practical purpose, such as agreement some topic better or learning something almost yourself and others?

When yous finish, share your results with the rest of the class and with your instructor.

Having answered the questions above, yous have probably noticed that your reading strategies differed depending on the reading task you were facing and on what you planned to practise with the results of the reading. If, for example, yous read lecture notes in guild to pass a test, chances are you "read for information," or "for the main" point, trying to remember as much textile as possible and anticipating possible test questions. If, on the other hand, y'all read a practiced novel, you probably just focused on following the story. Finally, if you were reading something that you hoped would assist yous respond some personal question or solve some personal problem, it is likely that yous kept comparing and contrasting the information that you read your ain life and your ain experiences.

You lot may have spent more time on some reading tasks than others. For example, when nosotros are interested in one particular piece of information or fact from a text, we usually put that text aside one time nosotros have located the information we were looking for. In other cases, yous may have been reading for hours on end taking careful notes and asking questions.

If you share the results of your investigation into your reading habits with your classmates, you may also notice that some of their reading habits and strategies were unlike from yours. Similar writing strategies, approaches to reading may vary from person to person depending on our previous experiences with different topics and types of reading materials, expectations we have of different texts, and, of grade, the purpose with which we are reading.

Life presents us with a variety of reading situations which demand different reading strategies and techniques. Sometimes, information technology is of import to exist as efficient as possible and read purely for information or "the primary indicate." At other times, information technology is important to merely "permit become" and plow the pages following a good story, although this means not thinking about the story you are reading. At the heart of writing and research, however, lies the kind of reading known as critical reading. Critical test of sources is what makes their use in research possible and what allows writers to create rhetorically effective and engaging texts.

Key Features of Disquisitional Reading

Critical readers are able to collaborate with the texts they read through advisedly listening, writing, conversation, and questioning. They exercise not sit back and wait for the pregnant of a text to come to them, but piece of work hard in club to create such pregnant. Critical readers are not made overnight. Becoming a disquisitional reader volition take a lot of practice and patience. Depending on your current reading philosophy and experiences with reading, becoming a critical reader may require a significant change in your whole understanding of the reading process. The trade-off is worth it, however. Past becoming a more critical and active reader, you will as well become a meliorate researcher and a ameliorate author. Last but not least, yous will enjoy reading and writing a whole lot more because you volition go actively engaged in both.

One of my favorite passages describing the substance of critical and active reading comes from the introduction to their book Ways of Readingwhose authors David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky write:

Reading involves a fair measure of push and shove. You lot make your mark on the book and information technology makes its mark on you lot. Reading is non simply a matter of hanging back and waiting for a slice, or its author, to tell y'all what the writing has to say. In fact, one of the difficult things about reading is that the pages earlier you will begin to speak only when the authors are silent and you begin to speak in their identify, sometimes for them—doing their work, continuing their projects—and sometimes for yourself, post-obit your own agenda (1).

Notice that Bartholomae and Petrosky describe reading process in pro-active terms. Significant of every text is "made," not received. Readers demand to "push and shove" in order to create their own, unique content of every text they read. It is up the you lot as a reader to make the pages in front of you lot "speak" by talking with and confronting the text, past questioning and expanding it.

Critical reading, and so, is a 2-way process. As reader, you lot are not a consumer of words, waiting patiently for ideas from the printed folio or a web-site to fill up your caput and make you smarter. Instead, as a critical reader, you need to interact with what you read, request questions of the author, testing every assertion, fact, or idea, and extending the text by adding your ain understanding of the subject and your own personal experiences to your reading.

The following are key features of the critical arroyo to reading:

• No text, still well written and administrative, contains its ain, pre-determined meaning.
• Readers must work hard to create meaning from every text.
• Disquisitional readers interact with the texts they read by questioning them, responding to them, and expanding them, normally in writing.
• To create meaning, critical readers use a multifariousness of approaches, strategies, and techniques which include applying their personal experiences and existing noesis to the reading process.
• Disquisitional readers seek actively out other texts, related to the topic of their investigation.

The post-obit section is an examination of these claims about critical reading in more detail.

Texts Nowadays Ideas, Non Accented Truths

In club to understand the mechanisms and intellectual challenges of disquisitional reading, we demand to examine some of our deepest and long-lasting assumptions nearly reading. Perhaps the 2 nearly significant challenges facing anyone who wants to become a more active and analytical reader is understanding that printed texts doe non comprise inarguable truths and learning to questions and talk back to those texts. Students in my writing classes often tell me that the biggest challenge they confront in trying to become critical readers is getting away from the idea that they have to believe everything they read on a printed page. Years of schooling have taught many of us to believe that published texts nowadays inarguable, almost absolute truths. The printed folio has authority because, before publishing his or her piece of work, every author goes through a lengthy procedure of approval, review, revision, fact-checking, and and then on. Consequently, this theory goes, what gets published must be true. And if it is true, it must be taken at face value, not questioned, challenged, or extended in any fashion.

Maybe, the ultimate authority among the readings materials encountered by college belongs to the textbook. As students, we all accept had to read and almost memorize textbook capacity in club to pass an test. We read textbooks "for data," summarizing their chapters, trying to notice "the primary points" then reproducing these main points during exams. I have nothing against textbook equally such, in fact, I am writing one right now. And it is certainly possible to read textbooks critically and actively. But, as I recall almost the challenges which many college students face trying to get active and critical readers, I come to the decision that the habit to read every text as if they were preparing for an exam on information technology, equally if it was a source of unquestionable truth and cognition prevents many from condign active readers.

Treating texts as if they were sources of ultimate and unquestionable knowledge and truth represents the view of reading equally consumption. According to this view, writers produce ideas and knowledge, and we, readers, consume them. Of grade, sometimes nosotros have to assume this stance and read for data or the "main point" of a text. But information technology is critical reading that allows us to create new ideas from what we read and to go contained and creative learners.

Critical reading is a collaboration between the reader and the author. It offers readers the ability to be active participants in the construction of meaning of every text they read and to utilise that meaning for their ain learning and cocky-fulfillment. Not fifty-fifty the all-time researched and written text is absolutely complete and finished. Granted, nearly fields of noesis accept texts which are called "definitive." Such texts normally stand for our best current knowledge on their subjects. However, fifty-fifty the definitive works go revised over time and they are always open to questioning and different interpretations.

Reading is a Rhetorical Tool

To understand how the merits that every reader makes his or her pregnant from texts works, it is necessary to examine what is know as the rhetorical theory of reading. The work that best describes and justifies the rhetorical reading theory is Douglas Brent‟s 1992 volume Reading as Rhetorical Invention: Knowledge, Persuasion, and the Teaching of Research-Based Writing. I like to employ Brent‟southward ideas to my discussions of disquisitional reading because I retrieve that they practise a good job demystifying disquisitional reading‟s chief claims. Brent‟s theory of reading is a rhetorical device puts pregnant substance behind the somewhat abstract ideas of active and critical reading, explaining how the mechanisms of active interaction betwixt readers and texts actually work.

Briefly explained, Brent treats reading not only equally a vehicle for transmitting information and knowledge, just also as a means of persuasion. In fact, according to Brent, knowledge equals persuasion because, in his words, "Knowledge is non merely what one has been told. Cognition is what i believes, what ane accepts equally being at least provisionally truthful." (xi). This curt passage contains ii assertions which are primal to the understanding of mechanisms of disquisitional reading. Firstly, discover that simply reading "for the primary bespeak" will not necessarily make you "believe" what you lot read. Surely, such reading tin fill our heads with data, just volition that information go our knowledge in a truthful sense, will we exist persuaded by information technology, or will we but memorize it to pass the test and forget it every bit presently as we pass it? Of course not! All of u.s.a. tin can probably recall many instances in which we read a lot to pass a examination only to forget, with relief, what nosotros read as presently as we left the classroom where that examination was held. The purpose of reading and research, then, is not to become as much as information out of a text as possible but to modify and update ane‟s system of beliefs on a given subject (Brent 55-57).

Brent further states: "The way we believe or disbelieve certain texts conspicuously varies from 1 individual to the adjacent. If you present a text that is remotely controversial to a group of people, some volition be convinced by information technology and some not, and those who are convinced will be convinced in different degrees. The job of a rhetoric of reading is to explain systematically how these differences arise— how people are persuaded differently past texts" (xviii).

Critical and active readers not only take the possibility that the same texts will have dissimilar meanings for unlike people, but welcome this possibility as an inherent and indispensable feature of strong, engaged, and enjoyable reading procedure. To answer his own questions almost what factors contribute to different readers‟ dissimilar interpretations of the same texts, Brent offers us the following principles that I take summarized from his book:

• Readers are guided by personal beliefs, assumptions, and pre-existing noesis when interpreting texts. Yous can read more on the function of the reader‟south pre-existing knowledge in the construction of meaning later on on in this chapter.
• Readers react differently to the logical proofs presented past the writers of texts.
• Readers react differently to emotional and upstanding proofs presented by writers. For instance, an emotional story told by a writer may resonate with one person more than with another because the first person lived through a like experience and the 2nd one did non, and then on.

The idea behind the rhetorical theory of reading is that when nosotros read, we non merely take in ideas, information, and facts, only instead we "update our view of the world." You cannot force someone to update their worldview, and therefore, the purpose of writing is persuasion and the purpose of reading is being persuaded. Persuasion is possible only when the reader is actively engaged with the text and understands that much more than simple retrieval of information is at stake when reading.

One of the primary factors that influence our decision to accept or not to accept an argument is what Douglas Brent calls our "repertoire of feel, much of [which] is gained through prior interaction with texts" (56). What this means is that when we read a new text, nosotros do not begin with a make clean slate, an empty mind. However unfamiliar the topic of this new reading may seem to united states of america, we arroyo it with a large baggage of previous knowledge, experiences, points of view, and and then on. When an argument "comes in" into our minds from a text, this text, by itself, cannot alter our view on the field of study. Our prior opinions and knowledge about the topic of the text we are reading will necessarily "filter out" what is incompatible with those views (Brent 56-57). This, of course, does not mean that, as readers, we should persist in keeping our old ideas almost everything and actively resist learning new things. Rather, it suggests that the reading process is an interaction between the ideas in the text in front end of us and our own ideas and pre-conceptions about the subject area of our reading. We do not always consciously measure out what we read according to our existing systems of knowledge and beliefs, but nosotros measure it notwithstanding. Reading, according to Brent, is judgment, and, like in life where we practice non ever consciously examine and analyze the reasons for which we make various decisions, evaluating a text often happens automatically or subconsciously (59).

Applied to research writing, Brent‟s theory or reading means the following:

• The purpose of research is not simply to retrieve information, but to participate in a conversation about it. Unproblematic summaries of sources is non inquiry, and writers should exist aiming for active interpretation of sources instead
• There is no such thing as an unbiased source. Writers brand claims for personal reasons that critical readers need to learn to empathize and evaluate.
• Feelings can be a source of shareable adept reason for belief. Readers and writers demand to employ, judiciously, ethical and pathetic proofs in interpreting texts and in creating their own.
• Research is recursive. Critical readers and researchers never stop request questions about their topic and never consider their research finished.

Active Readers Wait for Connections Between Texts

Earlier on, I mentioned that 1 of the traits of active readers is their willingness to seek out other texts and people who may exist able to assistance them in their research and learning. I notice that for many get-go researchers and writers, the inability to seek out such connections often turns into a roadblock on their research route. Here is what I am talking virtually.

Recently, I asked my writing students to investigate some problem on campus and to propose a solution to information technology. I asked them to apply both master (interviews, surveys, etc.) and secondary (library, Net, etc.) research. Conducting secondary research allows a writer to connect a local problem he or she is investigating and a local solution he or she is proposing with a national and fifty-fifty global context, and to meet whether the local state of affairs is typical or a-typical.

I group of students decided to investigate the issue of racial and ethnic diversity on our campus. The lack of diversity is a "hot" consequence on our campus, and recently an institutional task force was created to investigate possible means of making our academy more than various.

The students had no trouble designing inquiry questions and finding people to interview and survey. Their subjects included students and kinesthesia as well as the university vice-president who was changed with overseeing the work of the diversity job force. Overall, these authors have piddling trouble conducting and interpreting main research that led them to conclude that, indeed, our campus is not diverse enough and that most students would like to see the state of affairs change.

The next footstep these writers took was to look at the websites of some other schools similar in size and nature to ours, to see how our university compared on the upshot of campus diversity with others. They were able to discover some statistics on the numbers of minorities at other colleges and universities that allowed them to create a certain backdrop for their primary enquiry that they had conducted earlier.

Only expert writing goes beyond the local state of affairs. Good writing tries to connect the local and the national and the global. It tries to expect beyond the surface of the problem, beyond but comparison numbers and other statistics. It seeks to sympathize the roots of a problem and propose a solution based on a local and well as a global situation and enquiry. The main and secondary research conducted past these students was not allowing them to make that step from analyzing local data to understanding their problem in context. They needed another blazon of enquiry sources.

At that point, still, those writers hitting an obstacle. How and where, they reasoned, would we find other secondary sources, such as books, journals, and websites, nearly the lack of multifariousness on our campus? The answer to that question was that, at this stage in their research and writing, they did not need to wait for more than sources about our local trouble with the lack of diversity. They needed to await at variety and ways to increase information technology every bit a national and global event. They needed to generalize the problem and, instead of looking at a local instance, to consider its implications for the issue they were studying overall. Such research would not only have immune these writers to examine the problem every bit a whole but also to see how it was beingness solved in other places. This, in turn, might have helped them to propose a local solution.

Critical readers and researchers understand that information technology is non enough to look at the enquiry question locally or narrowly. Afterwards conducting research and understanding their problem locally, or equally it applies specifically to them, agile researchers contextualize their investigation by seeking out texts and other sources which would permit them to see the big moving picture.

Sometimes, it is difficult to empathize how external texts which exercise not seem to talk directly most yous can assistance y'all enquiry and write virtually questions, problems, and issues in your ain life. In her 2004 essay, "Developing 'Interesting Thoughts': Reading for Inquiry," writing teacher my former colleague Janette Martin tells a story of a pupil who was writing a paper nearly what information technology is similar to exist a collegiate athlete. The emerging theme in that paper was that of discipline and sacrifice required of student athletes. Simultaneously, that student was reading a chapter from the book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault called Discipline and Punish. Foucault‟s work is a study of the western penitentiary system, which, of class cannot be straight compared to experiences of a student athlete. At the aforementioned time, one of the leading themes in Foucault‟s work is subject. Martin states that the student was able to run across some connection between Foucault and her own life and employ the reading for her research and writing (6). In improver to showing how related texts tin can exist used to explore diverse aspects of the writer‟s own life, this instance highlights the need to read texts critically and interpret them creatively. Such reading and research goes beyond simply comparing of facts and numbers and towards relating ideas and concepts with i some other.

From Reading to Writing

Reading and writing are the 2 essential tools of learning. Critical reading is not a process of passive consumption, merely one of interaction and engagement between the reader and the text. Therefore, when reading critically and actively, it is important not only to accept in the words on the page, but also to interpret and to reflect upon what you read through writing and discussing it with others.

Critical Readers Understand the Departure Between Reacting and Responding to A Text

As stated earlier in this chapter, actively responding to difficult texts, posing questions, and analyzing ideas presented in them is the central to successful reading. The goal of an agile reader is to engage in a conversation with the text he or she is reading. In social club to fulfill this goal, information technology is important to understand the divergence betwixt reacting to the text and responding to it.

Reacting to a text is often washed on an emotional, rather than on an intellectual level. It is quick and shallow. For example, if nosotros encounter a text that advances arguments with which we strongly disagree, it is natural to dismiss those ideas out of hand as non wrong and not worthy of our attending. Doing and then would exist reacting to the text based only on emotions and on our pre-set opinions about its arguments. Information technology is easy to meet that reacting in this way does not take the reader any closer to understanding the text. A wall of disagreement that existed between the reader and the text before the reading continues to exist after the reading.

Responding to a text, on the other mitt, requires a careful study of the ideas presented and arguments avant-garde in information technology. Critical readers who possess this skill are not willing to just decline or accept the arguments presented in the text after the first reading right abroad. To continue with our example from the preceding paragraph, a reader who responds to a controversial text rather than reacting to it might apply several of the following strategies before forming and expressing an opinion about that text.

• Read the text several times, taking notes, asking questions, and underlining key places.
• Written report why the author of the text advances ideas, arguments, and convictions, so different from the reader‟s own. For example, is the text‟s author advancing an agenda of some social, political, religious, or economical grouping of which he or she is a member?
• Report the purpose and the intended audition of the text.
• Study the history of the statement presented in the text as much every bit possible. For example, modern texts on highly controversial issues such as the capital punishment, abortion, or euthanasia often use past events, court cases, and other evidence to advance their claims. Knowing the history of the problem will aid you to construct meaning of a difficult text.
• Written report the social, political, and intellectual context in which the text was written. Good writers use social weather to advance controversial ideas. Compare the context in which the text was written to the one in which it is read. For instance, accept social weather changed, thus invalidating the argument or making information technology stronger?
• Consider the author'south (and your ain) previous knowledge of the outcome at the center of the text and your experiences with it. How might such cognition or experience have influenced your reception of the statement?

Taking all these steps will help you to move abroad from but reacting to a text and towards amalgam informed and critical response to it.

To better sympathise the central differences between reacting and responding and betwixt binary and nuanced reading, consider the tabular array below.

Reacting to Texts	Responding to Texts
Works on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level Prevents readers from studying purposes, intended audiences, and contexts of texts they are working with Fails to institute dialog between the reader and the text past locking the reader in his or her pre-existing opinion nearly the argument	Works on an intellectual and emotional level past asking the readers to use all three rhetorical appeals in reading and writing about the text Allows for careful study of the text's rhetorical aspects Establishes dialog among the reader, text, and other readers by assuasive all sides to reconsider existing positions and opinions
Binary Reading	Nuanced Reading
Provides only "agree or disagree" answers Does non allow for an agreement of complex arguments Prevents the reader from a true rhetorical engagement with the text	Allows for a deep and detailed understanding of complex texts Takes into account "gray areas" of circuitous arguments Establishes rhetorical engagement betwixt the reader and the text

Critical Readers Resist Oversimplified Binary Responses

Disquisitional readers learn to avoid unproblematic "agree-disagree" responses to complex texts. Such manner of thinking and arguing is often called "binary" because is allows merely two answers to every argument and every questions. But the world of ideas is complex and, a much more than nuanced arroyo is needed when dealing with complex arguments.

When y'all are asked to "critique" a text, which readers are ofttimes asked to do, it does non mean that you have to "criticize" it and reject its argument out of mitt. What you are being asked to do instead is to carefully evaluate and analyze the text‟due south ideas, to understand how and why they are synthetic and presented, and merely and so develop a response to that text. Non every text asks for an outright agreement or disagreement. Sometimes, we as readers are not in a position to either simply support an statement or reject it. What we tin exercise in such cases, though, is to learn more almost the text‟s arguments by carefully considering all of their aspects and to construct a nuanced, sophisticated response to them. After you accept done all that, it will notwithstanding exist possible to disagree with the arguments presented in the reading, but your stance nigh the text will be much more than informed and nuanced than if you have taken the binary approach from the start.

2 Sample Student Responses

To illustrate the principles laid out in this section, consider the post-obit 2 reading responses. Both texts respond to a very well known slice, "A Alphabetic character from Birmingham Jail," by Martin Luther King, Jr. In the letter, King responds to criticism from other clergymen who had called his methods of civil rights struggle "unwise and untimely." Both student writers were given the same response prompt:

"Afterwards reading Rex'southward piece several times and with a pen or pencil in hand, consider what shapes Male monarch‟s letter. Specifically, what rhetorical strategies is he using to achieve a persuasive event on his readers? In making your decisions, consider such factors every bit groundwork information that he gives, ways in which he addresses his immediate audience, and others. Recollect that your goal is to explore Male monarch‟s text, thus enabling you to sympathise his rhetorical strategies better."

Educatee "A"

Martin Luther King Jr'due south "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is a very powerful text. At the time when minorities in America were silenced and persecuted, Rex had the courage to lead his people in the struggle for equality. Later being jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, Rex wrote a letter to his "fellow clergymen" describing his struggle for civil rights. In the letter of the alphabet, King recounts a brief history of that struggle and rejects the allegation that it is "unwise and untimely." Overall, I think that King's letter is a very rhetorically effective text, i that profoundly helped Americans to empathise the civil rights movement.

Student "B"

King begins his "Letter of the alphabet from Birmingham Jail" by addressing it to his "fellow clergymen." Thus, he immediately sets the tone of inclusion rather than exclusion. Past using the word "boyfriend" in the address, I think he is trying to do two things. First of all, he presents himself every bit a colleague and a spiritual brother of his audience. That, in event, says "you can trust me," "I am i of your kind." Secondly, by addressing his readers in that mode, Rex suggests that everyone, even those Americans who are not direct involved in the struggle for civil rights, should be concerned with it. Hence the word "fellow." Male monarch'south opening almost invokes the phrase "My fellow Americans" or "My swain citizens" used then oft past American Presidents when they accost the nation.

Male monarch then gain to give a brief background of his actions equally a civil rights leader. As I read this part of the alphabetic character, I was wondering whether his readers would really have not known what he had accomplished every bit a ceremonious rights leader. And then I realized that perhaps he gives all that background information equally a rhetorical move. His immediate goal is to keep reminding his readers about his activities. His ultimate goal is to show to his audience that his actions were non-violent but peaceful. In reading this passage by Male monarch, I remembered once again that it is important not to assume that your audience knows anything nearly the subject of the writing. I will try to use this strategy more in my own papers.

In the middle of the letter, King states: "The purpose of our straight-activity program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation." This sentence looks similar a thesis statement and I wonder why he did not identify information technology towards the beginning of the text, to go his betoken across right away. After thinking about this for a few minutes and rereading several pages from our class textbook, I think he leaves his "thesis" till after in his slice because he is facing a notso-friendly (if not hostile) audience. Delaying the thesis and laying out some background information and evidence first helps a writer to prepare his or her audition for the coming argument. That is some other strategy I should probably utilise more often in my own writing, depending on the audience I am facing.

Reflecting on the Responses

To be sure, much more tin be said about King‟s letter than either of these writers take said. However, these two responses permit us to see 2 dramatically different approaches to reading. Later on studying both responses, consider the questions below.

• Which response fulfills the goals set in the prompt ameliorate and why?
• Which responses shows a deeper understanding of the texts by the reader and why?
• Which writer does a meliorate chore at avoiding binary thinking and creating a sophisticated reading of Rex‟s text and why?
• Which writer is more likely to use the results of the reading in his or her ain writing in the time to come and why?
• Which writer leaves room for response to his text by others and why?

Disquisitional Readers Do not Read Alone and in Silence

I of the cardinal principles of critical reading is that active readers exercise not read silently and by themselves. By this I mean that they take notes and write about what they read. They also discuss the texts they are working with, with others and compare their own interpretations of those texts with the interpretations constructed by their colleagues.

Every bit a higher educatee, yous are probably used to taking notes of what y'all read. When I was in college, my favorite way of preparing for a examination was reading a chapter or two from my textbook, so endmost the volume, and so trying to summarize what I take read on a slice of paper. I tried to get the chief points of the capacity down and the explanations and proofs that the textbooks‟ authors used. Sometimes, I wrote a summary of every affiliate in the textbook and and so studied for the examination from those summaries rather than from the textbook itself. I am sure you lot have favorite methods of note taking and studying from your notes, likewise.

But now it strikes me that what I did with those notes was not disquisitional reading. I simply summarized my textbooks in a more curtailed, manageable form and then tried to memorize those summaries before the test. I did not take my reading of the textbooks any further than what was already on their pages. Reading for data and trying to extract the main points, I did not talk dorsum to the texts, did non question them, and did not try to extend the knowledge which they offered in any manner. I too did not endeavor to connect my reading with my personal experiences or pre-existing cognition in any fashion. I besides read in silence, without exchanging ideas with other readers of the same texts. Of course, my reading strategies and techniques were dictated past my goal, which was to pass the test.

Critical reading has other goals, one of which is inbound an on-going intellectual exchange. Therefore it demands unlike reading strategies, approaches, and techniques. One of these new approaches is non reading in silence and alone. Instead, critical readers read with a pen or pencil in hand. They besides talk over what they read with others.

Strategies for Connecting Reading and Writing

If yous want to get a critical reader, you need to get into a habit of writing as y'all read. You too need to understand that complex texts cannot be read simply once. Instead, they require multiple readings, the first of which may exist a more general one during which you get acquainted with the ideas presented in the text, its structure and way. During the 2nd and any subsequent readings, even so, you will need to write, and write a lot. The post-obit are some critical reading and writing techniques which agile readers use as they work to create meanings from texts they read.

Underline Interesting and Of import Places in the Text

Underline words, sentences, and passages that stand up out, for whatever reason. Underline the cardinal arguments that yous believe the author of the text is making as well every bit any evidence, examples, and stories that seem interesting or important. Don‟t exist afraid to "get information technology wrong." At that place is no correct or wrong here. The places in the text that you underline may be the same or different from those noticed by your classmates, and this departure of estimation is the essence of critical reading.

Accept Notes

Take notes on the margins. If you exercise non desire to write on your volume or journal, adhere post-information technology notes with your comments to the text. Practice not be agape to write likewise much. This is the stage of the reading process during which you lot are actively making meaning. Writing near what you read is the best way to make sense of it, especially, if the text is difficult.

Exercise not be afraid to write besides much. This is the stage of the reading process during which you are actively making meaning. Writing about what you read will help y'all not only to call back the argument which the writer of the text is trying to accelerate (less important for critical reading), just to create your own interpretations of the text you are reading (more important).

Here are some things you can do in your comments

• Enquire questions.
• Agree or disagree with the author.
• Question the evidence presented in the text
• Offering counter-testify
• Offer additional show, examples, stories, and so on that support the writer‟due south argument
• Mention other texts which accelerate the same or like arguments
• Mention personal experiences that enhance your reading of the text

Write Exploratory Responses

Write extended responses to readings. Writing students are often asked to write 1 or two page exploratory responses to readings, but they are not e'er articulate on the purpose of these responses and on how to approach writing them. By writing reading responses, you are continuing the important work of critical reading which you lot began when you lot underlined interesting passages and took notes on the margins. You are extending the pregnant of the text by creating your ain commentary to it and possibly even branching off into creating your ain argument inspired by your reading. Your instructor may give y'all a writing prompt, or ask you lot to come with your own topic for a response. In either case, realize that reading responses are supposed to be exploratory, designed to help y'all delve deeper into the text y'all are reading than note-taking or underlining will let.

When writing extended responses to the readings, it is of import to keep ane matter in heed, and that is their purpose. The purpose of these exploratory responses, which are frequently rather informal, is not to produce a complete argument, with an introduction, thesis, trunk, and conclusion. It is non to impress your classmates and your teacher with "large" words and complex sentences. On the opposite, it is to help you empathise the text you lot are working with at a deeper level. The verb "explore" means to investigate something by looking at information technology more closely. Investigators become leads, some of which are fruitful and useful and some of which are dead-ends. Every bit you investigate and create the meaning of the text yous are working with, do non exist afraid to have different directions with your reading response. In fact, information technology is of import resist the urge to brand conclusions or think that you have establish out everything most your reading. When it comes to exploratory reading responses, lack of closure and presence of more leads at the end of the slice is unremarkably a skilful thing. Of course, you should always cheque with your instructor for standards and format of reading responses.

Try the following guidelines to write a successful response to a reading:

Call up your goal—exploration. The purpose of writing a response is to construct the meaning of a difficult text. It is not to get the job washed as apace every bit possible and in equally few words every bit possible.

Every bit you write, "talk back to the text." Make comments, ask questions, and elaborate on complex thoughts. This function of the writing becomes much easier if, prior to writing your response, you had read the assignment with a pen in hand and marked important places in the reading.

If your instructor provides a response prompt, brand certain you lot understand it. So try to reply the questions in the prompt to the best of your power. While yous are doing that, exercise not exist agape of bringing in related texts, examples, or experiences. Active reading is about making connections, and your readers volition appreciate your work because it will help them sympathise the text better.

While your primary goal is exploration and questioning, make sure that others tin can sympathize your response. While information technology is OK to be informal in your response, make every effort to write in a articulate, error-free language.

Involve your audience in the discussion of the reading past asking questions, expressing opinions, and connecting to responses fabricated by others.

Utilise Reading for Invention

Use reading and your responses to offset your own formal writing projects. Reading is a powerful invention tool. While preparing to start a new writing project, go back to the readings y'all have completed and your responses to those readings in search for possible topics and ideas. As well await through responses your classmates gave to your ideas about the text. Another splendid way to start your own writing projects and to begin research for them is to wait through the listing of references and sources at the end of the reading that you are working with. They tin provide first-class topic-generating and research leads.

Keep a Double-Entry Journal

Many writers like double-entry journals because they allow us to brand that leap from summary of a source to interpretation and persuasion. To start a double-entry journal, carve up a page into two columns. Every bit you read, in the left column write downward interesting and important words, sentences, quotations, and passages from the text. In the right column, correct your reaction and responses to them. Be as formal or informal as you want. Record words, passages, and ideas from the text that you find useful for your paper, interesting, or, in any, fashion striking or unusual. Quote or summarize in total, accurately, and fairly. In the right-hand side column, inquire the kinds of questions and provide the kinds of responses that volition subsequently enable you to create an original reading of the text you are working with and use that reading to create your own paper.

Don't Give Up

If the text y'all are reading seems too complicated or "wearisome," that might mean that yous have not attacked it aggressively and critically enough. Circuitous texts are the ones worth pursuing and investigating because they present the near interesting ideas. Critical reading is a liberating practice because you exercise non have to worry about "getting it right." As long as you make an endeavor to engage with the text and as long every bit you are willing to work hard on creating a meaning out of what you read, the estimation of the text you lot are working with volition be valid.

IMPORTANT: So far, we have established that no pre-existing meaning is possible in written texts and that critical and active readers work hard to create such meaning. We accept as well established that interpretations differ from reader to reader and that in that location is no "right" or "wrong" during the disquisitional reading procedure. Then, you lot may enquire, does this mean that whatsoever reading of a text that I create volition exist a valid and persuasive one? With the exception of the most outlandish and purposely-irrelevant readings that have nothing to practice with the sources text, the answer is "yes." However, remember that reading and interpreting texts, as well as sharing your interpretations with others are rhetorical acts. Beginning of all, in order to learn something from your critical reading experience, yous, the reader, need to be persuaded by your own reading of the text. Secondly, for your reading to be accustomed by others, they need to exist persuaded past it, too. It does non mean, withal, that in order to make your reading of a text persuasive, you lot simply accept to find "proof" in the text for your point of view. Doing that would hateful reverting to reading "for the master bespeak," reading as consumption. Critical reading, on the other hand, requires a different approach. One of the components of this approach is the utilize of personal experiences, examples, stories, and knowledge for interpretive and persuasive purposes. This is the subject of the next department of this chapter.

One Critical Reader'southward Path to Creating a Pregnant: A Case Study

Earlier on in this chapter, we discussed the importance of using your existing knowledge and prior experience to create new meaning out of unfamiliar and difficult texts. In this section, I'd similar to offering y'all one student writer‟s account of his meaningmaking process. Before I do that, even so, information technology is important for me to tell yous a trivial most the class and the kinds of reading and writing assignments that its members worked on.

All the writing projects offered to the members of the class were promoted by readings, and students were expected to actively develop their own ideas and provide their own readings of assigned texts in their essays. The chief text for the class was the anthology Ways of Reading edited by David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky that contains challenging and complex texts. Similar for well-nigh of his classmates, this approach to reading and writing was new to Alex who had told me earlier that he was used to reading "for data" or "for the main point."

In grooming for the first writing projection, the class read Adrienne Rich's essay "When Nosotros Dead Awaken: Writing as Revision." In her essay, Rich offers a moving business relationship of her journeying to becoming a author. She makes the case for constantly "revising" one‟s life in the low-cal of all new events and experiences. Rich blends voices and genres throughout the essay, using personal narrative, academic argument, and fifty-fifty poetry. As a result, Rich creates the kind of personal-public argument which, on the one hand, highlights her ain life, and on the other, illustrates that her Rich's life is typical for her time and her environment and that her readers tin can also learn from her experiences.

To many beginning readers and writers, who are used to a bully separation of "personal" and "bookish" statement, such a alloy of genres and styles may seem odd. In fact, on of the challenges that many of the students in the course faced was understanding why Rich chooses to alloy personal writing with academic and what rhetorical effects she achieves by doing so. To Later writing informal responses to the essay and discussing it in grade, the students were offered the following writing assignment:

Although Rich tells a story of her own, she does so to provide an illustration of an even larger story—one about what it means to be a woman and a writer. Tell a story of your ain about the means you lot might be said to have been named or shaped or positioned by an established or powerful civilisation. Similar Rich (and mayhap with like hesitation), use your own experience every bit an illustration of both your own state of affairs and the situation of people like you. You should imagine that the consignment is a way for you to use (and put to the exam) some of Rich's terms, words like "re-vision," "renaming," and "structure." (Bartholomae and Petrosky 648).

Notice that this assignment does not ask students to but analyze Rich's essay, to dissect its argument or "main points." Instead, writers are asked to work with their own experiences and events of their own lives in order to provide a reading of Rich which is affected and informed by the writers‟ own lives and own knowledge of life. This is disquisitional reading in action when a reader creates his or her i's own meaning of a complex text by reflecting on the human relationship between the content of that text and one‟s own life.

In response to the assignment, one of the class members, Alex Cimino-Hurt, wrote a paper that re-examined and reevaluated his upbringing and how those factors have influenced his political and social views. In particular, Alex was trying to reconcile his own and his parents‟ anti-state of war views with the fact than a close relative of his was fighting in the war in Iraq as he worked on the newspaper. Alex used such terms every bit "revision" and "hesitation" to develop his slice.

Like most other writers in the class, initially Alex seemed a petty puzzled, even dislocated by the requirement to read someone else‟due south text through the prism of his ain life and his own experiences. However, every bit he drafted, revised, and discussed his writing with his classmates and his instructor, the new approach to reading and writing became clearer to him. After finishing the paper, Alex commented on his reading strategies and techniques and on what he learned about critical reading during the project:

On Previous Reading Habits and Techniques

Previously when working on any project whether information technology be for a History, English language, or any other class that involved reading and research, in that location was a certain corporeality of minimalism. As a student I tried to balance the to the lowest degree amount of endeavour with the all-time grade. I distinctly recall that earlier, being taught to skim over writing and reading so that I institute "main" points and highlighted them. The value of thoroughly reading a piece was non taught considering all that was needed was a shallow interpretation of any information that was provided followed by a regurgitation. [Critical reading] provided a dramatic deviation in perspective and helped me acquire to not simply dissect the meaning of a piece, but also to meet why the writer is using sure techniques or how the reading applies to my life.

On Developing Critical Reading Strategies

When reading critically I found that the most important thing for me was to set bated a block of time in which I wouldn't have to hurry my reading or skip parts to "Go the gist of information technology". Developing an eye for…detail came in ii ways. The first method is to read the text several times, and the second is to discuss it with my classmates and my teacher. Information technology rapidly became clear to me that the more than I read a certain slice, the more I got from information technology as I became more comfortable with the prose and writing way. With respect to the 2d way, there is always something that you tin miss and there is always a different perspective that can be brought to the table by either the instructor or a classmate.

On Reading Rich's Essay

In reading Adrienne Rich's essay, the problem for me wasn't necessarily relating to her piece of work simply instead just finding the right perspective from which to read it. I was raised in a very open family then being able to relate to others was learned early in my life. Once I was able to parallel my perspective to hers, it was simply a matter of composing my own story. Mine was my liberalism in conservative environments—the fact that frustrates me sometimes. I felt that her struggle frustrated her, as well. Past using quotations from her work, I was able to show my own situation to my readers.

On Writing the Paper

The process that I went through to write an essay consisted of iii stages. During the offset phase, I wrote down every coherent idea I had for the essay as well as a few breathless ones. This helped me create a lot of material to work with. While this initial material doesn‟t always accept direction it provides a foundation for writing. The second stage involved rereading Rich‟s essay and deciding which parts of it might be relevant to my own story. Looking at my own life and at Rich‟s work together helped me consolidate my paper. The third and final phase involved taking what is left and refining the style of the paper and taking care of the mechanics.

Advice for Critical Readers

The first key to being a disquisitional and active reader is to find something in the slice that interests, bothers, encourages, or just confuses you. Use this to bulldoze your analysis. Remember there is no such thing every bit a boring essay, but a boring reader.

• Reading something one time is never enough and so reading information technology rapidly before grade just won't cutting it. Read it once to get your brain comfy with the work, then read it again and actually endeavour to understand what's going on in it. You can't read it too many times.
• Enquire questions. Information technology seems similar a unproblematic proposition just if you never enquire questions y'all'll never go whatsoever answers. So, while you‟re reading, call back of questions and just write them down on a slice of newspaper lest you forget them after about a line and a half of reading.

Conclusion

Reading and writing are rhetorical processes, and i does not exist without the other. The goal of a proficient writer is to engage his or her readers into a dialog presented in the slice of writing. Similarly, the goal of a critical and active reader is to participate in that dialog and to accept something to say back to the writer and to others. Writing leads to reading and reading leads to writing. Nosotros write because nosotros take something to say and nosotros read because we are interested in ideas of others.

Reading what others accept to say and responding to them help u.s.a. make that all-important transition from simply having opinions well-nigh something to having ideas. Opinions are often over-simplified and fixed. They are non very useful because, if different people have different opinions that they are not willing to change or conform, such people cannot work or think together. Ideas, on the other hand, are always evolving, fluid, and flexible. Our ideas are informed and shaped by our interactions with others, both in person and through written texts. In a world where thought and activeness count, it is not enough to simply "agree to disagree." Reading and writing, used together, allow us to discuss complex and difficult issues with others, to persuade and be persuaded, and, nigh importantly, to act.

Reading and writing are inextricably connected, and I hope that this chapter has shown you ways to use reading to inform and enrich you writing and your learning in general. The cardinal to becoming an active, disquisitional, and interested reader is the development of varied and effective reading techniques and strategies. I'd like to close this chapter with the words from the writer Alex Cimino-Injure: "Being able to read critically is important no affair what yous program on doing with your career or life because it allows yous to understand the world around you."

Sources

Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky, Eds. Introduction. Ways of Reading. eighth Ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin'south, 2008.

Brent, Douglas. 1992. Reading equally Rhetorical Invention. NCTE, Urbana, Illinois. Cimino-Hurt, Alex. Personal Interview. 2003.

Martin, Janette. 2004. "Developing 'Interesting Thoughts:' Reading for Research." In Research Writing Revisited: A Sourcebook for Teachers, eds. Pavel Zemliansky and Wendy Bishop, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. (iii-13).

Rich, Adrienne. 2002. "When Nosotros Dead Awaken: Writing every bit Re-vision." In Ways of Reading, 6th ed. Eds. Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky. Bedford/St. Martin‟south Boston, (627-645).

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