How to Read for This Class (T. Howe)

This handout draws on and adapts the “Reading Actively” handout from Lewis & Clark College’s Writing Center, available online at http://legacy.lclark.edu/~writing/handouts/Reading%20Actively.pdf

Active reading means rethinking the way you approach a text. Often, active reading is physical; you take notes, you mark up the text, you ask questions, you discuss. But it is also about thinking through the task at hand. What are your goals? What will you do with this text? Why are you reading it? If you don’t have answers—real answers!—to these questions, you will have a hard time reading actively and productively.

First, as the Writing Center at Lewis & Clark suggests, “Orient yourself to the text before you begin reading.” Ask yourself: What are you reading for? What are your questions? How is the text organized? Are there any signposts or other techniques the author has used to help you get a handle on the content? What is the text’s purpose? How are you going to be using it?

Ensure you have clear and appropriate goals for your reading. That is, make sure that you:

- know what you want to learn from a specific text;

- you realistically assess the amount of time and effort you will need to devote to each text

- you need to read, and plan accordingly.

How do I do this? You might try keeping a reading log. This could be in a separate notebook, or if you have small handwriting, in the margins of the text itself. Underlining or highlighting by itself doesn’t work well because it doesn’t help you remember—re-writing the words and ideas will help you remember! But most of all, active reading requires that you become conscious of your work as a reader—how you read, why you read, and even when you read.

Read with your goals in mind. Do you need a good statement about the general ethos of the 1920s? Look for a good, one-sentence, elegantly-worded quote you can use, and extract it into your reading log. Do you need to understand why Americans in the 1920s were so obsessed with consumption, with buying things? Look for a paragraph that really gets at this idea, and then paraphrase it in your reading log. Do you need to get a basic handle on what this text is going to be about, so that you can read with a better sense of purpose? Look at the opening and closing paragraphs, and note down important points. You might also pay special attention to sub-headings, if the author uses them! Often, an author will pose (sometimes obliquely) key questions that underwrite the text you're reading and he or she is writing--if you can understand why the author is writing, then you will be very close to understanding what the author is writing. Look for ways to articulate these key questions, and note them down in your reading log--along with any ideas that seem to answer, even if just in part, those questions.

Read actively in all your work for this class; this is where you will get ideas for essays, material for discussion, and more!