Response to first reading assignment

My first reading, which was from The Little Seagull Handbook was about reading strategies and discussed important things to remember when reading something. The section was mostly about reading with a critical eye and highlighted important strategies for reading critically and analyzing the arguments. I found that the book had many good suggestions for reading and it made note of the fact that different texts often require different strategies or different ways to go about reading them thoroughly. I thought that one of the best suggestions it offered was to preview the text, looking through it and getting a basic understanding of the writing style and the ideas. I had never thought of this before, but I can see that it could be very useful in reading critically. Previewing the text allows you to prepare for the rest of the writing but also gives you a brief sense as to what the writings is about. Another suggestion that I found to be very useful was thinking about your initial response to a reading. I know that sometimes when I read things the ideas aren’t always clear to me in the beginning. By writing down initial impressions and then going back over the reading things may become clearer and my understanding or evaluation of the reading might change. The other interesting section of this reading was about analyzing the argument. All written texts present some sort of argument, and as a critical reader looking to obtain the true meaning behind a text it is crucial to understand the argument being made and to determine whether it is logical or not.

My second reading was from the Bunn article How to Read Like a Writer. The article discussed the importance of critical reading and assessment of ideas in the writing process. I think that reading is an essential part of writing because in order to write anything we have to have had some sort of experience, a situation which we read a certain way and are able to discuss through writing. Reading doesn’t have to be just textual but can be experiential as well. The author goes on to say that it is equally important to read and understand an authors technique as it is to understand the textual meaning. I know from experience it can be hard to read something that you are unfamiliar with when you have no basis of the textual information. I feel it can also be difficult when reading a new author or type of writing that is in an unfamiliar style or format. The author of the article explains that the key is to determine what the most crucial information and useful format of the text is. This is important in determening the meaning of a piece as well as analyzing what could have been done differently.

The last reading I did was titled Reading Games and was about strategies for scholarly reading. The main idea of the article is about how sometimes when reading things we aren’t familiar with we tend to skim over sections and gloss over the material often not retaining what was read. The author offers many tips when it comes to readings, but I think the most important for me was the advice about thuroughly reading the abstract sections at the beginning and the conclusion at the end because these are where many of the main points are summed up. If we thuroughly understand these points prior to the full reading we will be more aware and knowledgable about the text and will be able to better understand the information and retain that info after we’ve read it.