EXPECT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN LEARNING
College instructors generally offer less help with reading assignments than high school teachers do. If you have questions, they will answer them, but they won’t remind you to do the reading, and they often won’t check to see if you are keeping up with the assignments. They will expect you to understand the reading and be able to apply it, and you may be called on in class to demonstrate your understanding through discussion or quizzes. So use the time-management suggestions in Chapter 1 to schedule time to complete all your assignments, and leave extra time for challenging selections.
EXPECT TO READ SELECTIONS FOR ACADEMIC AUDIENCES
The reading you will be assigned in college will likely be more challenging than the reading you were assigned in high school. As you progress through college, you will read increasingly challenging selections, many of which are written for specialized or academic audiences. These take more time to read than do less challenging selections: You may need to look up unfamiliar vocabulary as you master the language of the discipline. You may also need to think about each sentence or paragraph before you understand it well enough to move on to the next. Your instructors will expect you to make an effort to understand the reading and to engage with it critically, so plan to read assignments more than once.
EXPECT TO READ SELECTIONS IN DIFFERENT GENRES AND WITH DIFFERENT PURPOSES
In college, you will encounter a wide range of reading material. In addition to reading textbooks, you may read scholarly articles, essays, critiques, field reports, and scientific studies. You will need to use different strategies for reading each type, or genre of material. Begin by noticing how each genre is organized. Then determine the writer’s purpose: Is the reading selection mainly informative or mainly persuasive? Next, devise a strategy for identifying what is important to learn and remember about it. (The suggestions elsewhere in this chapter and in this book will help you with this task.)
EXPECT TO READ CRITICALLY
In college, understanding the literal content of reading assignments is often not enough. You must go beyond what an article or essay says to understand what it means. You also need to think about how true, useful, and important the information is. Instructors expect you to interpret, evaluate, and respond to the ideas you have read about. They expect you to read and think critically, questioning and challenging ideas as you encounter them. The advice in this chapter and the next will help you read critically.
Many reading assignments include illustrations, photographs, charts, and graphs. Writers use these visuals to clarify or emphasize ideas, condense information, explain a complicated process, or illustrate a viewpoint. Think about the purpose of each visual you encounter and the way that it relates to the text that accompanies it. Chapter 4 discusses interpreting visuals in detail.
To read actively and critically, you will need to write as you read. Try taking notes on assignments, highlighting, outlining or drawing a graphic organizer, summarizing, and annotating texts to engage with them actively. Try also to synthesize, or connect, what you’re reading with what you’ve learned in other classes or elsewhere.
EXPECT TO USE READINGS AS MODELS
By studying what others have written, you can improve your own writing. As you read an article, essay, or textbook assignment, take note of the writer’s techniques. For example, notice how paragraphs are organized, how language is used to express ideas, and how ideas are developed. Then practice these techniques, in either your writing journal or your draft essays.
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AVOIDING MISCONCEPTIONS Much misinformation exists about how to read effectively and efficiently. This section dispels some popular misconceptions about reading. |
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| MISCONCEPTION: You must read, understand, and remember everything. | TRUTH: Most texts contain a mixture of important and not-so-important ideas and information. Your job is to sort through the material and evaluate what you need to know. |
| MISCONCEPTION: You should read everything the same way. | TRUTH: Your purpose for reading should guide the way you read. The type of material, your familiarity with the subject, and what you are expected to do when you have finished reading (take a test or participate In a class discussion, for example) should determine how you read. |
| MISCONCEPTION: Reading an assignment once is enough. | TRUTH: Reading an assignment once is often not sufficient. You will need to reread to discover the author’s position, summarize the author’s key ideas, and analyze the strength of the supporting evidence. |
| MISCONCEPTION: If it’s in print or online, you can trust it. | TRUTH: Not everything in print or online is true. Just as you shouldn’t believe everything you hear, neither should you believe everything you read. Read with a critical, questioning eye. To evaluate a text, consider the author’s credibility and purpose for writing. |
EXPECT TO RESPOND TO READINGS IN WRITING
Many instructors will ask you to respond in writing to assigned readings. They may ask you to take a brief quiz based on the reading, for example, or to prepare a list of questions or issues that the reading raises in preparation for class discussion. The purpose of such activities is to make sure you understand the reading and are ready to analyze and evaluate it. Instructors may also require you to write a response paper. (See the Guide to Responding to Text later in this chapter.)