When you attend a ball game or watch a TV show, do you get actively involved? Baseball fans cheer some players and boo others, evaluate plays and calls, and shout out advice. Similarly, fans of TV shows react to sudden turns of events, sympathizing with some characters and despising others. By contrast, if you are not a fan of a baseball team or TV show, you might watch the game or show passively, letting it take its course with little or no personal involvement or reaction (and little recollection of key events a few days later).

Like fans of a sports team or TV show, active readers get involved with the material they read. They question, think about, and react to ideas using the process outlined in Figure 3.1. Their active involvement in what they read helps them understand and remember the selection long after they finish the page. The sections that follow explain in detail each of the steps in reading actively.

Never start reading an essay or other reading assignment without preparation. Your mind isn’t ready. Instead, use previewing and guide questions to discover what the reading is about and focus your mind on the topic.

Previewing. Previewing is a quick way of familiarizing yourself with an essay’s content and organization. It helps you decide what you need to learn, and it has a number of other benefits as well.

To preview a reading selection, use the guidelines in the following list. When previewing, remember to read only the parts of an essay that are listed:

Form questions to guide your reading. Before you begin reading, devise questions about the selection based on sections you previewed. Then, as you read, answer those questions. This process of asking and answering questions will strengthen your comprehension and recall of the material. The following examples will help you start devising your questions.

Not all essays lend themselves to these techniques. In some essays, you may need to dig deeper into the introductory and final paragraphs to form questions, or you may discover that the subtitle is more useful than the title. Look again at your preview of “American Jerk.” Using the introductory paragraphs of that essay, you might decide to look for answers to this question: Why is the author, Todd Schwartz, negative toward Americans?

While you are reading, figure out which ideas are important and which are less so by

As you read, identify unfamiliar vocabulary to figure out or look up later, and be prepared to take action to strengthen your comprehension of challenging reading assignments.

Examine key elements. As you read assigned articles and essays, pay particular attention to the following key elements:

You’ll learn much more about each part of an essay in Chapters 6, 7, and 8.

Now read the “American Jerk” again, paying attention to the marginal notes that identify and explain the various parts of it.

Highlight key points. As you read, you will encounter many new ideas, some more important than others. You will agree with some and disagree with others. Later, as you write about what you have read, you will want to return to the main points to refresh your memory. To locate and remember these points easily, read with a highlighter or pen in hand. Highlighting is an active reading strategy only when you use it to distinguish important ideas from less important ideas, so be selective. (If you highlight every idea, none will stand out.) The following guidelines will make your highlighting as useful as possible:

Annotate to record your impressions. When you annotate a reading assignment, you jot down your reactions to the reading in the margins or in a reading journal. Think of your annotations as a personal response to the author’s ideas. Your annotations can take many forms:

Later, when you are ready to write about or discuss the reading, your annotations will help you focus on major issues and questions. Sample annotations for a portion of “American Jerk” are shown below.

Figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words. Before looking up an unfamiliar word in a dictionary, use one of these strategies to figure it out for yourself:

Other times a less obvious clue reveals meaning or you can figure out meaning by considering how the word is used in the passage.

Understand challenging readings. At one time or another, all students encounter challenging reading assignments. Perhaps the language is unfamiliar or you just can’t connect with the author, the topic, or the writing style. Regardless of the problem, however, you know you must complete the assignment. The Troubleshooting Guide in Table 3.1 lists some typical problems that students experience with challenging reading material and identifies strategies for solving them.

When you finish reading an assignment, it may be tempting to close the book, periodical, or browser window and move immediately to another task. However, doing so increases the likelihood that you will forget most of what you have read because your brain will not have had time to process the material. To improve your comprehension and recall, take a few minutes to review the material and draw a graphic organizer.

Review. Review immediately after you finish reading. Reviewing should not take much time; your goal is to touch on each main point one more time, not to embark on a long and thorough study. To review material after reading, use the same steps you used to preview the reading. Pay particular attention to the following elements:

Draw a graphic organizer. Think of a graphic organizer as a means of tracking the author’s flow of ideas. Your graphic organizer should include all the key elements of an essay. Figure 3.2 shows the correct format for a graphic organizer. An example of a graphic organizer for “American Jerk” appears in Figure 3.3. Work through the organizer, rereading the essay paragraph by paragraph at the same time.

Summarize to Check Your Understanding. If you are expected to be able to discuss a reading with other students or write about it in a response paper or on an exam, writing a summary (a brief restatement of the major points) of what you have read is a good idea. Summarizing can help improve your retention of the material. It is also an excellent way to check whether you have understood what you have read. If you have difficulty writing a summary, you probably do not understand what is important in the reading.

To write an effective summary, use the following guidelines:

Here is a sample summary of the essay “American Jerk.” It was written by a student using the preceding six steps.

Although people believe they are acting politely, rudeness and incivility are on the rise. We overdo political correctness, yet we behave rudely to everyone around us. Media, entertainment, and cell-phone usage illustrate improper behavior and support our rudeness. The author believes that because our civilization has evolved to the point that we are no longer concerned with basic survival, we can act selfishly while pretending to be civil. The author also contends that people are simply distracted and self-absorbed but not intentionally rude. The bottom line is that people must choose their own behavior and decide how they will act.

Many students keep a journal in which they write summaries and other responses to what they’ve read. These journal entries can serve as useful sources of ideas for writing papers.

Keep a response journal. A response journal is a section of your writing journal in which you record summaries of readings as well as your reactions to and questions about readings. Experiment with the following two ways to organize a response journal entry to discover the one that works better for you. (For more about keeping a journal, see Chapter 2.)

On a blank page, write, outline, draw, or create a diagram to express your reactions to an essay. Because the open-page format encourages you to let your ideas flow freely, it may work well for creative and spatial learners. Figure 3.4 shows one student’s open-page response journal entry for “American Jerk.” This entry suggests several possible topics to write about: identifying generational differences in defining civility, determining standards for civility, and recognizing subjectivity in evaluating behavior.

Divide several pages of your journal into two columns. If you journal on a computer, you can insert a table with two columns. Label the left side “Quotations” and the right side “Responses.” Under “Quotations,” jot down five to ten quotations from the text. Choose remarks that seem important — that state an opinion, summarize a viewpoint, and so forth.

In the right column, next to each quotation, write your response to the quotation. You might explain it, disagree with or question it, relate it to other information in the reading or in another reading, or tie it to your experiences. The two-column format forces you to think actively about an essay while you question what you have read and draw connections. Because it provides more structure than the open-page format, the two-column format may be ideal for pragmatic or concrete learners.

Figure 3.5 follows the two-column format. In this journal entry, the writer has uncovered several possible topics: types or degrees of rudeness, the meaning of “socioeconomically disadvantaged,” and self-centered behavior.

You may find it useful to paraphrase the quotation before writing your response. Paraphrasing forces you to think about the meaning of the quotation, and ideas for writing may come to mind as a result. To use paraphrasing, add a “Paraphrases” column to your journal between the “Quotations” column and the “Responses” column. (For more on paraphrasing, see Chapter 23.)

Use a reading-response worksheet. A reading-response worksheet allows you to record all your ideas about a reading in one place. The worksheet guides your response while directing your thinking. Figure 3.6, a blank worksheet, includes space for recording your first impressions, a summary, connections to your experiences, ideas for analysis, and additional sources.

Click the chart to download

Use your learning style. If you are a verbal or social learner, you probably find reading a comfortable and convenient way to obtain information. But even if you prefer a different learning style, most of your assignments will be in print form. So it’s important that you use your learning style in a way that enhances reading and writing.