I have a few favorite ways to approach active and critical reading. When I am told to annotate a paper I tend to read through a first time without marking anything up at all. This helps me to get a main idea about what the reading is about and what ideas I could be thinking of. I then go through and markup the text a second time that I am reading it. I go through and highlight the main things that I think are the most important points throughout. I tend to circle in a red pen any words that I do not know and want to look up right away so I am able to understand exactly what is being said. I will then write off to the side the definition of that word.
I find it extremely helpful to ask questions in the margins of the text. As an example while annotating Yo-Yo Ma’s article “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education” Annotated Pages I wrote down many basic questions in the margins such as “Why?” “What is the meaning behind this?”, and any other thoughts that came to mind while reading. This always helps to get my mind thinking about the reasonings behind the text, and what the purpose is behind what I am reading. Like Susan Gilroy states “Mark up the margins of your text with words and phrases: 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.” I will always underline things that I agree with in the text, because this could later be used to help me when trying to pull from the reading to get evidence for a paper.
I like to write down any new ideas that I have as well. This helps me to build of of what another writer’s work and make any connections I have with what they are saying. After reading I like to write down what I think the main purpose of what I was reading was, and what the main ideas were throughout. Once I get the assignment for the prompt that we are going to write I then go through and read it a third time. This time I make sure that I agree with the things that I did while reading before, and I also see if I want to mark down anything else. This has seemed to be the best way for me to understand fully what a text is trying to explain.
