Active Reading
Learning Outcome #3: Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.
Throughout the semester, I used many different active reading strategies. For English 110, we had to read lots of material in the textbooks “They Say I Say” and “Emerging.” This material consisted of essays, paragraph templates and general information about writing and how to identify credible sources. One of the most difficult adjustments coming to college was the amount of reading we were expected to do and understand in college level classes. These readings were extremely dense with information and hard to understand. I often found myself having to read pieces of writing multiple times before I grasped the main ideas of the texts. The readings themselves were also very long, in that I was expected to read multiple chapters before every class for some of my classes. Some active reading strategies that I employed to make the process easier were that I would do the readings in smaller chunks instead of doing them during one continuous sitting. I also highlighted important terms when I encountered them, underlined important sentences, and looked up definitions to terms that I did not understand. I also found that I could not leave reading assignments until the last minute because I found myself rushing through the chapters, not retaining the information. I will therefor approach reading assignments in the future sooner and split them up into smaller sections.
