A Guide to Critical Reading
Your Reading Process Will Vary With Your Purpose
Sometimes it is appropriate to skim a book chapter or article to get the basic meaning. For example, when writing a paper, you might want to skim something before you choose whether to use it. Most reading you will do at university, however, will be critical reading. Critical reading is reading for detail, depth, and understanding, rather than surface memorization of the facts. You are to the point in your academic career that you need to form your own arguments and you will be asked less and less to simply reiterate what someone else has written. Critical reading will also help prepare you for the critical writing you will be doing throughout the semester.
Some Basic Tips on Critical Reading
Take notes and respond to the text
Distinguish between what the author is saying and your reflections on the material
Use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words
Write notes on what a paragraph or section “says” and what it “does”
o What it “says” is a summary of the content
o What it “does” is its purpose or function within the essay
Remember that all texts reflect the author’s perspective or frame of reference
o All texts are subject to interrogation and analysis
o No text can give you the “whole truth,” only the author’s version of the truth—a version necessarily distorted by the author’s own selectivity, emphasis, and writing style
Remember that texts are trying to change your view of something
o Texts are not conveyers of inert information, they are rhetorically purposeful messages aimed at affecting your view of the subject at hand
o Reflect on your reading—you decide what to accept and what to doubt (when you doubt something, raise the issue in class for discussion!)
DON’T read looking only or primarily for information ; DO read looking for ways of thinking about the subject matter
1. Critical reading occurs after some preliminary processes of reading....