College Reading

All students have different expectations about reading and have had different relationships with texts. Not everyone enjoys reading, nor are they always able to have positive experiences from reading. Therefore, developing critical reading skills can help students’ reading become constructive and valuable. The expectations for college reading include reading specifically and purposefully to understand content, to enhance critical thinking, to prepare for an assignment or an exam, or even to take notes. Therefore, college reading takes more time. You may find yourself needing two or more hours to read the materials for each class. This might sound like a lot, but reading critically not only helps us understand the text, but also helps us develop ways to connect the information we read to other important areas and even other classes. This chapter will address ways to effectively move through a text first by reading to gain information and then by delving deeper to answer questions, analyze situations, argue positions, and evaluate sources, all of which are important parts of the critical reading process. In turn, we will be able to get to the root of issues and enhance critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving, and decision-making, and apply those to real-world scenarios. Let’s get started!

What is Critical Reading?

To improve your writing skills, it is important to improve your reading skills, and the best way to do this is to become a critical reader. Critical readers approach the text with open and interested minds to unlock not only what the text says, but also what the text means. This is an interactive approach that involves communicating with the text in a purposeful and constructive manner, so you can participate in and respond to the exchange of information.

Some interactive approaches include:

• Keeping a pen in your hand: As you read, annotate the text. Underline or highlight interesting passages. Write notes in the margins: questions, reactions, connections, etc. Circle new words, so you can look them up later. If you do not or cannot write on the text, keep a reading journal where you can collect your annotations.
• Knowing your speed: How long does it take you to read a page? Students often get in trouble when they attempt to read an assigned text at the last minute. If you know how long it takes you to read, you can ensure that you have plenty of time to read the text carefully and stress free.
• Taking breaks: Some texts may be longer than others, and you’ll want to avoid trying to read them all at once. When you notice your eyes skimming over words, give yourself a break. If you try to power through, you will likely miss out on important information, and it may actually take you longer because you have to read sections again.
• Re-reading for understanding: If you have time, consider reading through the text once quickly to get the main points. Then, read it again to help confirm your understanding of the content and to identify interesting details that you can discuss in class or include in a paper.

Critical reading does not mean to pick apart a text and look for errors or even to criticize a work. Critical reading does mean, however, to consider various features of a work and think about the effect they have on the reader.

Reading Strategies

How to Read Critically

Reading was one of the first skills we learned in our early education. We all know how to read, but do we know how to read critically? To read critically, we must know WHY we are reading. Before you can truly improve your reading skills, you need to understand what happens in good readers’ minds while they read. You may even do these things already. You just don’t know it…yet. Good readers have developed good habits when they read called strategies that help them understand how to use the basic components of a text to connect to and determine the importance of what they are reading. They also visualize, ask questions, and read between the lines of what they read.

Understand the Basic Components

The first strategy is to understand the basic components of a text to connect to and determine the importance of what you are reading so that you can get the most from your reading experience. Basic components of a text include the structure or organizational pattern that is used, key features such as the table of contents, index, glossary, and figures which are the chapter headings, illustrations, and any tables or graphs used.

There are five recognized structures: description, sequence, cause and effect, problem and solution, comparison and contrast. These structures help unlock the purpose of the text and how the information will be presented.

The key features help readers navigate through the text. Components such as the table of contents help readers find the specific chapters, sections, and pages where the information is located within the text. Indexes list topics, names, places, and key terms alphabetically and provide the page numbers for easy access. Glossaries are like mini-dictionaries provided to define terms that were used in the text. Glossaries can be found at the end of the book or sometimes at the end of individual chapters.

Finally, using additional figures in the text such as chapter headings, illustrations, tables, charts, and graphs explain the important ideas, concepts, and theories that are presented.

Determine Importance by Identifying Main Ideas and Supporting Details

As you begin to read, it is important to identify both the main ideas and supporting details of the materials. To find the main idea, ask yourself, “what is the author trying to tell me?” Look for titles, section headings, bold print words, italicized print, or any other indicators that the information is important. Another way to determine the main idea is to look for repeated words or phrases that indicate a topic or common theme.

To find the supporting ideas, look for ways that the author builds upon or supports the main idea. What evidence, backing, or examples does the author provide? Again, look for indicators in the text such as section headings, bold print words, or repeated words or phrases.

Make Connections

Another way to read critically involves making connections. When you make connections, think about how the text connects to you or similar events in your life. Ask yourself how you might react in a similar situation. What life experiences have you had that are similar to the ones described in the text? How can you use this information to expand your learning? Next, consider how the text connects to other books, articles, or materials that you have read. Does the information from the new reading strengthen or weaken concepts from what you’ve previously read. How can you combine information from both texts to expand your knowledge? Finally, use what you have read to make connections to the real world or real-life events. Are the scenarios in the text realistic? Has anything like what you’ve read happened in real life? For example: when you make connections while reading, you might connect what you are reading now to an experience you had as a child or to something you have read for another class. Being able to make connections as you read creates a bond between you and the reading material and promotes critical thinking skills and enhances our learning about not only ourselves, but also the world around us.

Detect Bias

Reading critically helps us to detect any bias as well as recognize disinformation and misinformation present in a piece of writing. Bias refers to ways that authors add slant to their writing by including personal opinions or beliefs that may affect the relationship between the reader and the writer, alter facts, and damage credibility. Since we are bombarded with information daily, it is important to use critical reading strategies to recognize disinformation and misinformation in writing. Disinformation is the act of intentionally misleading the reader while misinformation is simply getting the facts wrong. To detect bias and recognize disinformation and misinformation, critical readers look to other sources to verify information and to seek different points of view. They also look for sarcasm, exaggeration, one-sided writing, unsupported claims, and missing information.

Ask Questions

As you read, ask questions along the way. This not only will help you to understand the material, but also will help you retain the information. Think of questions that will help you make the most out of your reading experience such as questions your instructor might ask on a test or a quiz or questions that will help you connect this reading material to other information you have learned or read.

Define Vocabulary

As you read and question, define and interpret any words or terms that you are not familiar with. Do this by using context clues or even looking up the terms in a dictionary, using the text’s glossary, or reading any footnotes or sub-text that might be in the chapter. To enhance these critical reading strategies, you might also want to take notes or create flashcards.

Use Reflective Thinking Strategies

Critical readers often use reflective thinking strategies to help make inferences and predictions by using what they know to help them learn what they do not know. By “reading between the lines,” good readers can discover meaning from what has not been explicitly stated in the writing. Inferences help readers reflect on their skills and capabilities to help them understand new thoughts and concepts. When you infer, you use what you have read coupled with what you already know to go beyond what is stated on the surface to create meanings. Prediction helps readers make educated guesses based on what they have read and uses that information to determine what will happen next. To infer and predict ask yourself the following questions: what is not stated that I have figured out? What do I predict will happen? Why do I think so? Unfortunately, both inferences and predictions can be wrong. These errors can occur when readers fail to use previous reading strategies such as connecting to the text or asking questions and defining vocabulary.

Visualize

Visualizing or seeing is one of the final critical reading strategies. This strategy can help you to put what you have read into perspective so that you can effectively use the information. This strategy is a checkpoint to see if you have fully read, grasped, and integrated what you have read and incorporated most or all of the previously discussed strategies. Visualizing is a process that allows you to translate what you have read into a mental image and may help improve your overall understanding of a text as well as how the pieces of a text, story, or novel work together. Being able to see the action as it occurs also helps with other reading strategies.

Synthesize

One more final critical reading strategy is synthesizing, and this occurs when you are able to blend your own ideas with the ideas from the text to create new ideas. When you synthesize, you search for distinct, unique, unrelated components and combine them to form new associations and connections. Surprisingly enough, you already do this. You just might not be aware of it.

Read Actively

Before, during, and after reading, be aware of the reading strategies that you might use, are using, or have used. Before reading, familiarize yourself with the text. What sort of information will you be reading? Why are you reading it? What do you expect to find? Are you familiar with this type of reading material? After answering these basic questions develop a reading plan. This includes identifying how much time you have to read the material and how you plan to approach the reading. A reading plan also helps you identify how you will complete other tasks such as asking questions, defining unfamiliar terms, or taking notes.

During reading, incorporate as many reading strategies as possible and read with a pencil or highlighter in hand. Note which reading strategies are helpful and which ones are not as helpful. You might even find yourself developing your own strategies based on your individual situation.

After reading, review your notes. What have you learned that you did not previously know? How have you expanded your knowledge of the topic? Which reading strategies helped and which ones did not? Being able to answer these questions will indicate how well you have read and understood the information as well as your ability to use the information.

Summary

Today, students need critical reading skills more than ever as they are bombarded with a constant stream of information from multiple outlets, and messages, intentions, and agendas can get lost in flowery prose. While it may take more time, critical reading is a necessary process, and it must be developed by using a variety of strategies. Learning to read critically boosts comprehension, critical thinking, attention, observation, and concentration.

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