Employing Techniques

At the beginning of English 110 I approached reading an essay by trying to read critically and interact with the text. I would circle words I didn’t know the meaning of, look them up, and then write a synonym so I would remember what the word meant when going back through the text. I also would read the questions about the text before actually reading the text so I would know what to look for when reading. If I agreed or disagreed I would write in the margins. I would also ask questions if I didn’t understand what the author was saying. I also apply these techniques of active reading, critical thinking, and informal reading when reading articles for my psychology class. For homework we are usually assigned a couple articles to read and then answer questions about. To know what I’m going to be writing about I read the questions first and then mark where there are possible answers to the questions in the text. To improve, I could possibly read with the idea in mind that I will be using this article or essay to write a paper about and could look for ideas that interest me and that I could expand upon or connect to another piece of work.