In order to truly understand a text you must think while reading the text, employing your critical reading skills while going through a text can help to give the reader a rounded understanding of the concept. English 110 learning outcomes number three states that “employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.” In order to reach this outcome I annotate my readings while I work through them, this allows me to question the text, highlight what’s important and understand anything that I may question. This also sets up an outline for when you go back through the text to be able to revisit and understand you ideas easier. Susan Gilroy talking about habits that help you to interrogate texts and she states “mark up the margins… ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes.” To do this I always underline key terms, this allows me to while skimming the text see the key ideas quickly. I also will make comments in the margins about things that don’t make sense or that I feel the need to have a comment made on them. For example I also may underline a statement made by the author and then ask a question about it that I can then go research later. I think that finding the definitions to unknown words is important to fully understanding the text, if there is a key term that you don’t understand there is a good chance that you won’t fully understand the point the author is making. Annotating is an important part to fully understanding texts, in order to completely understand that point the author is reading you must be able to interrogate the text and look at it critically.
