Active critical reading is an important part of reading anything. It allows you to intake information in a whole new way, rather than reading it once. Active critical reading is when you annotate your reading start to finish, and engage in it. My active reading skills are shown as I leave questions in the margin to come back to later and have a conversation with the author. I also write down vocabulary that I don’t understand so I can look up the meaning, as well as marking a place where I didn’t understand the content, or places that I had an idea that I wanted to go back to. Susan Gilroy who is an accomplished writer discusses how summarizing sections is a helpful way to remember what you’re reading. By summarising sections you can make connections to put together the pieces that you’re reading. So you have a clearer vision of the piece overall. She also mentions how making all these annotations puts you in a dialogue with the writer. You may be wondering how it does that. It does that by letting you express your thoughts, and asking questions while reading what the writer is trying to say. That’s important to do because it’s easier to retain information by purposely making yourself engaged in the writing, so you come back to it later and still understand it. When you actively read you will understand complicated content better. That’s why I always make sure to actively read so I can understand content better, as well as ask questions, and write down how I’m thinking.
In the essay below that I annotated, I underlined what stood out to me, as well as writing notes in the margin that I would want to go back to. Those are two examples of way to annotate.
https://shorton5.uneportfolio.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=68&action=edit
