My approach to active and critical reading is to engage in a conversation with the text through annotations. Documenting your reactions to the text and parts that you find interesting, confusing, or important is showing active reading. As Gilroy says annotations are a way to “have an ongoing conversation with yourself as you move through the text and to record what that encounter was like for you”. Within your annotations you can also engage in critical reading by asking questions such as “what does this mean?” “why did the author write this or choose to include this part?”, all these questions are examples of ways to engage in critical thinking. An example of this can be seen in my annotations on Yo-Yo Ma’s essay “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education”. In my annotations there is clear evidence of active and critical reading and thinking through the questions I ask in the margins and the connections I make to other sources and thoughts. Gilroy says the most truthful statement about questions, “they are reminders of the unfinished business you still have with a text”.
Another approach to mastering critical and active reading is writing about what you have read. Responding to the author’s ideas allows for deeper and further thought about what you have read. It is a way to make connections between the text and the world, yourself or other texts which shows active and critical reading. Gilroy Suggests “set course readings against each other to determine their relationship”. This practice can help make these connections clear and make the reading more meaningful and valuable. This can be done simply through blog posts that can allow you to agree, disagree, or complicate points made in the text. These ways of engaging in conversation with readings allows for learning and deeper thought about what you have read. This can be seen in my informal reading response that is a response to Galen Strawson’s essay and in my annotations for this it can be seen that I had many questions and was getting confused. In my informal reading response I develop on the commentary from my annotations and complicate some of Strawson’s points. This demonstrates my ability to employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking. I feel with all evidence provided I have successfully fulfilled Learning Outcome 3.
