Learning Outcome #3


Outcome 3:
Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.

In my opinion, active reading is one of the most important factors that go into the prewriting stage, Active Reading allows you to fully grasp the text before making any conclusions and claims, this is something I believe I’m really good at after learning what to look for in the text. I struggled with this a bit in highschool for reasons I never knew what I should be looking for , I never retained the information I just read but after learning how to actively read and annotate it has allowed me to learn on a whole different level. After making my annotations, It always allows me to go back into the reading and look at the most important parts and see what exactly I need to know in more of an efficient pattern. We worked a lot with active reading and annotations this year in regards to many different styles of text and one of my favorites that we annotated, and even later wrote an essay on, was the essay “This is Water ” by David Foster. At first this was a very challenging piece to read and understand because I thought there were a lot of underlying meanings throughout the speech, but It was a great speech to be able to annotate and pull out the most important parts Wallace was giving. Some of the really intresting underlying meanings that I was able to annotate is about life purposes such as living life on a deafult setting, on choice and thinking, and even on our awareness and conciousness (as seen in Figures 5-7). When I annotated this I used the annotations tools of understanding, questioning, relating, challenging or extending, and rhetorical tools to understand the text better as seen in Figures 1-4.

The most Important annotations styles I like to use when active reading are the annotations where you extend on an idea or even the ability to ask questions through out the text. Asking questions and extending on what is written helps me form my own opinions as well as the ability to fully grasp the concepts of the piece, it allows my mind to start rolling so when Its time to reflect on the piece. Making annotations while active reading also plays into the process of my writing because it allows me to form claims around my questions and ideas, and turn them into paragraphs, while at the same time analysing and connecting them into my writing. I enjoy using the provided guidelines of annotations so I get a base knowledge of what I need to know , but then I usually like to go off and sometimes add some personal notes such as asking why something happened, or just what ever pops in my head first just to get my thoughts flowing.

FIGURES 1-4: “This is Water”
FIGURES 5-7: “This is Water” – underlying meanings
(https://www.sloww.co/this-is-water-david-foster-wallace/)

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