Learning Outcome 3 states, “Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking.” This learning outcome centers around my ability to constructively read and understand text. I believe that this is an area where I have confidence. I think that I am pretty receptive to most readings and am able to gain a good understanding, especially if I am actively annotating. I have decided to showcase Blog #1 from my web page where we had to annotate Rhy Southan’s “Is it OK to make art?” I felt as though I was able to delve deep into his text by forming questions and rewording certain areas for myself. These are both methods of active reading that Susan Gilroy brought up in the excerpt from her text, “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard.” Her article stresses how we should persistently ask questions throughout whatever we read. She wants us to “get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions,” which is a useful skill when attempting to fully understand our texts. Posing questions along with rewording statements are extremely useful tools. Personally, I believe that I most frequently engage these two, however I also mark up my texts with underlines and stars, to make sure I either remember that it is a useful point, or star it just to come back to it later if I wasn’t quite grasping it at the time.
