Critical Reading Strategies
Reading effectively requires approaching texts with a critical eye: evaluating what you read for not just what it says, but how and why it says it. Effective reading is central to both effective research (when you evaluate sources) and effective writing (when you understand how what you read is written, you can work to incorporate those techniques into your own writing). Being an effective reader also means being able to evaluate your own practices, working to develop your critical reading skills.
Identify What You Are Reading For
- Knowing why you are reading a given text can help you organize both your reading and how you can use what you read.
- Before you read a text, ask and answer the following kinds of questions: Are you reading only for general content? For data? For specific information or for general thematic concern? For arguments that support or contest your thesis in a writing assignment? For information that you know you will need for an assignment, or for information to get you thinking about what you will need?
Allow Enough Time to Read, and Take Your Time
- Reading critically is not a fast process. Many students do not set aside enough study time for reading (and rereading), and read everything either too quickly or at the same speed. If you know what you are reading for, you can better distinguish information that can be skimmed from that which should be more closely examined, and make better use of your reading time.
- Preview or survey the text before reading begins, looking for clues related to its purpose, its relevance, its difficulty, and how it connects with ideas or information you already know.
- Be willing to struggle with the text in order to understand it – but do not get hung up on single, tough details in first readings. Rather, hold confusing passages in mental suspension, and continue to read with the idea that what seems difficult to understand now may be cleared up as you go along.
Remember that Re-reading is a Part of Effective, Critical Reading
- Just as having more than one conversation with another person leads to closer understanding, conducting a number of readings leads to a richer and more meaningful relationship with, and understanding of, a text.
- If your first reading is for basic information and evaluation, subsequent readings can take on different levels of focus (on style and tone, on details, on examples, or intellectual or ideological tradition, etc.).
- In re-reading, work to separate parts of arguments (e.g., thesis idea, evidence, preview, counterarguments) and to understand how these parts work to support the author’s thesis.
Ask Yourself If You Can Explain Both “What the Text Says” and “What the Text Does.”
- In other words, can you both provide a summary of key claims and theses and understand its purpose, what this text seeks to do (to report or state facts, to challenge a certain idea, to persuade, to open up new inquires, etc.?)
- Keep in mind that all texts filter reality – distort, persuade, and arrive at different conclusions – and that all texts are trying to change your view in some way.
Attempt to Understand How Each Writer’s Background and Purposes Influence What They Write
- Reading a text critically requires that you ask questions about the writer’s authority and agenda. You may need to put yourself in the author’s shoes and recognize that those shoes fit a certain way of thinking.
- Work to determine and understand an author’s context, purpose, and intended audience.
Work to Understand Your Own Strategies and to Improve Them
- Ask yourself questions about how you read: Do I read too slowly or too quickly? Do I tend to lose my focus? Can I scan key information or main ideas?
- Consider the characteristics of effective reading above in relation to those practices and strategies you already use, to get a sense of your current reading strategies and how they might be improved.
