Active Reading
Active reading is an important process in which one is able to really understand key portions of what the author is trying to get across to those reading their work. Active reading involves annotating and carefully reading pieces of literacy and pulling out important pieces worth emphasizing. Susan Gilroy’s article titled “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard” discusses the importance and overall pedestal active reading is placed on by those who wish to achieve higher learning.
To me active reading used to be a tedious process in which I always dreaded when I heard the name of. Though my overall opinion on the topic changed when I got into college and realized the benefits and overall necessity of active reading. For me, the most important portions of active reading were the understanding and questioning portions of reading. Though all pieces are important such as challenging ideas or connecting pieces, understanding and questioning opened up more space for formulating new ideas. Questions such as “Why am I being asked to read this text” as stated in Gilroy’s article are questions I often looked for when reading texts. These types of questions open up ideas for annotations where I as the reader find myself searching for important pieces of text. Along with the questioning was the understanding portion, though this can sometimes be tied into questioning, understanding annotations prove the success of active reading as you search to understand the text in order to complete the other forms of annotations.
When it comes to active reading in English 110, the process is the same as described by Gilroy. In my annotation of Jordan’s text as shown below in the link titled “Annotation Gee and Jordan #2”, I question part of Jordan’s text by annotating “Are teachers also promoters of stereotypes? If a teacher teaches exactly what is socially right, they are contributing to the problem”. This annotation is in regards to Jordan’s claim that black English should be incorporated into modern education. I questioned the roles of current teachers based off of Jordan’s belief by stating that based off of how Jordan explains the integration of black English, that current teachers are harming the movement by teaching what is socially “acceptable” English in America.
