Art a Which of the Following Best Identifies the Authorã¢ââ¢s Main Claim in the Text?

ane Disquisitional Reading

Elizabeth Browning; Karen Kyger; and Cate Bombick

Reading as a Conversation

What would happen if you walked by the tables in forepart of Duncan Hall on your first day at HCC, approached a group of strangers quietly chatting, and proceeded to announce to the group exactly what you lot were thinking at the moment? Most probable, the group would stop talking, look at you, laugh, and slowly motility abroad. Allow's try another arroyo.

This time, y'all walk up and quietly join the group. Yous heed for a few minutes to figure out the topic being discussed and to understand the group members' different perspectives before adding your own voice to the chat. You lot take probably used this method many times throughout your life and have found it to work well, peculiarly when joining a group of people y'all exercise non know very well. This method is the very aforementioned way to approach reading in your higher courses.

To be a successful reader in college, you will need to move across simply agreement what the author is trying to say and recollect near the conversation in which the author is participating.

By thinking about reading and writing as a conversation, you volition want to consider:

• Who else has written about this topic?
• Who are they?
• What is their perspective or argument on this topic?
• What type of show do they use to support their indicate of view?

In this chapter, we volition introduce expectations for college reading, identify key strategies of skilled readers, and review the active reading process. Throughout the chapter, you volition observe links to samples, examples, and materials you may utilise.

Nosotros will also be introducing the concept of critical reading. Disquisitional reading is moving across merely understanding the author's meaning of a text to consider the choices the author makes to communicate their bulletin.

Past learning to read critically, yous will not just meliorate your comprehension of college-level texts, but also improve your writing by learning about the choices other writers have make to communicate their ideas. Honing your writing, reading, and critical thinking skills will give you a more solid foundation for success, both academically and professionally.

Understanding and using the strategies outlined in this chapter is an important office of your success in your ENGL-121 Higher Composition form. You volition need stiff reading skills in order to understand assignments, write papers and participate in form discussion. Here are the ENGL-121 objectives that are relevant to the reading process:

four) Maintain a controlling purpose for inquiry and writing that emerges from a conspicuously-defined research question.

5) Locate, evaluate, and integrate appropriate sources accurately and fairly through paraphrase and direct quotation.

6) Critically engage sources through estimation, analysis, and/or critique in service of developing and supporting logical, well-defined claims.

Taken together, these objectives prescribe an approach to reading that is driven past questions, that is sensitive to authors' pregnant, credibility, and relevance, and that does not take sources' perspectives for granted simply that evaluates the reliability of their claims.

one.  Expectations for Reading in Higher

2.  What is disquisitional reading?

3.  Why practise nosotros read critically?

iv.  How do we read critically?

4.1 Get-go with Questions

4.ii Identify the Main Idea and Supporting Details

4.iii  Decode Vocabulary

4.4 Utilize Metacognitive Strategies

4.five Read Recursively

5. The Active Reading Procedure

5.1 Earlier yous read

v.2 While you read

five.3 After you read

6. Now what?

1. Expectations for Reading in College

How does reading in college differ from reading in loftier schoolhouse?

In higher, bookish expectations change from what you may have experienced in high school. Equally the quantity of work expected of you increases, the quality of the work as well changes. You must practise more than just understand course textile and summarize it on an exam. You will be expected to engage seriously with new ideas by reflecting on them, analyzing them, critiquing them, making connections, drawing conclusions, or finding new ways of thinking nearly them. Educationally, you are moving into deeper waters. Learning how to read and write strategically and critically will help you swim.

Effigy 1.ane "High School versus College Assignments" summarizes other major differences between loftier schoolhouse and college assignments.

High School Reading	College Reading
Chief Types:  Textbook, literature	Main Types:  Textbook, literature, persuasive assay, research, multimedia sources, self-selected material
Student Expectations: Read to observe the chief idea, share opinions, and make personal connections	Pupil Expectations:  Read to course new conclusions almost the author or text, generate examples that support/refute a text and compare/contrast texts.  Employ texts to develop questions for further enquiry.
Educatee Goals:  Sympathize text and share reactions to the text, be able to reply questions posed past the teacher, and inquire questions to clarify understanding.	Pupil Goals: Analyze the text and synthesize to enter academic conversations on a topic, be able to ask questions, and share insights with peers and professors in society to further the conversation.
Teacher Expectations:  Complete reading/assignment, answer who, what, when, where, and how questions, and share connections to the text.	Professor Expectations:  Develop thoughtful reactions to assignments, enter into a conversation on the topics, why questions are the focus, share questions and answers almost a topic.
Teacher Goals:  Check educatee understanding of the textile through assignments (test, quizzes, papers, etc).	Professor Goals:  To guide and respond to educatee's analysis and synthesis of data.  Comprehension is assumed.
If Problems Ascend:  Teachers may go out of their way to aid students who are performing poorly on exams, missing classes, not turning in assignments, or struggling with the course.  Students are often given "second chances" to complete and submit assignments.	If Problems Ascend: Professors may notice students performing poorly, but often wait students to exist proactive and take steps to help themselves (i.e. attending office hours, emailing professors, etc.). "Second chances" are less mutual.

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two. What is critical reading?

Reading critically does not simply hateful beingness moved, afflicted, informed, influenced, and persuaded by a piece of writing. It refers to analyzing and agreement the overall composition of the writing as well as how the writing has achieved its event on the audience.

This level of understanding begins with thinking critically near the texts you are reading. In this example, "critically" does non mean that you lot are looking for what is incorrect with a piece of work (although during your disquisitional process, you lot may well do that). Instead, thinking critically ways approaching a work as if you were a critic or commentator whose job it is to analyze a text across its surface.

Tip:
A text is simply a piece of writing, or as Merriam-Webster defines it, "the main body of printed or written thing on a folio." In English classes, the term "text" is oftentimes used interchangeably with the words "reading" or "work."

This step is essential in analyzing a text, and information technology requires y'all to consider many different aspects of a writer's work. Do not just consider what the text says; think about what effect the author intends to produce in a reader or what effect the text has had on you as the reader.  For example, does the author want to persuade, inspire, provoke humor, or merely inform the audience?  Look at the process through which the author achieves (or does non achieve) the desired effect and which rhetorical strategies are used.

These rhetorical strategies are covered in the next chapter. If you disagree with a text, what is the point of contention? If yous agree with it, how do y'all think y'all can aggrandize or build upon the argument put forth?

Consider the example below. Which of the following tweets below are critical and which are uncritical?

Figure ane.2 "Lean In Tweets"

three. Why do we read critically?

Critical reading has many uses. If applied to a piece of work of literature, for case, it can become the foundation for a detailed textual analysis. With scholarly articles, critical reading can help y'all evaluate their potential reliability as future sources.

Finding an error in someone else's argument can be the point of destabilization you need to make a worthy argument of your own, illustrated in the final tweet from the previous epitome, for example. Critical reading can assist you hone your ain argumentation skills because it requires yous to think carefully near which strategies are effective for making arguments, and in this age of social media and instant publication, thinking carefully about what we say is a necessity.

4. How to read critically

Reading does not come naturally. It is not an instinct that y'all were born with — rather, it is a cultural development that began 6,000 years ago when humans began to use symbols to represent ideas. The procedure of reading is learned through instruction and recruits encephalon mechanisms that evolved for other purposes.

In other words, you lot weren't born to read. Reading is a learned skill that relies on interaction nature, nurture, and civilisation. It is a cognitive tool that is developed through learning and practice. So what reading strategies are already in your toolbox?  What strategies tin can you add together to your toolbox to become a more efficient and constructive college reader?

 four.one Start with Questions

Questions to Ask a Text

Inquiry-based learning methods, or question-based investigations, are often the footing for writing and research at the college level. Specific questions generated about the text tin guide your critical reading process and help you lot when writing a formal analysis.

When reading critically, you lot should begin with broad questions and and then piece of work towards more specific questions; later all, the ultimate purpose of engaging in critical reading is to turn you lot into an analyzer who asks questions that work to develop the purpose of the text

In order to develop good questions before reading a text, you volition desire to think virtually your purpose for reading.  Equally a college educatee,  you'll desire to think about why your professor assigned this particular text?  How does this text connect to topics y'all accept been discussing in class or to other assigned readings?

For example, if you accept been assigned to read UMBC President, Freeman Hrabowski's essay entitled, "Colleges Ready People for Life,"  ask yourself why your professor assigned that particular text.  Perhaps your professor wants yous to read a variety of perspectives on the purpose of college.  In that case, you lot'll want to ask a question such every bit, What is Hrabowski's view on the purpose of higher?   Peradventure, your professor is preparing you lot to write an statement essay and would similar students to see how other authors have crafted their arguments.  In that case, a skillful question might be, How does Hrabowski innovate other people'south views on this topic and how tin can that help me in my own writing?

Some other effective questioning strategy is to turn the title or a sub-heading into a question by adding what, how, or why to the championship or heading. Yous can plow the title into a question by adding how. The question becomes "How practice colleges prepare people for life?" Once y'all have finished reading the essay, render to that question to see how well you can answer information technology using the information yous learned from the text.

Figure one.3 "Instance Questions to Ask a Text"

Questions For Further Inquiry

In add-on to asking questions of the text and author, you lot will want to use a text to develop additional questions about the topic.  This is a crucial stride in the process of inbound into an academic conversation.  To develop questions for further inquiry, yous should focus on open-concluded questions that cannot be easily answered by a quick Net search.

For example, if yous are reading a text about changing the proper name of Washington's NFL squad, a question for future inquiry could be "What are the effects of media stereotypes?" A closed-ended question such equally "What other NFL teams use Native Americans equally a mascot?" would shut the door to research.  The answer to the second question tin be easily establish using a quick search that ends your line of inquiry.  Conversely, the first question tin can lead to a much deeper level of critical thinking virtually the topic.

As you read and acquire more about the topic, you may want to develop additional questions even if this line of inquiry goes in a completely different management from where you lot started. To develop questions for inquiry consider asking these types of questions:

• Where are in that location holes or gaps in the logic or evidence in this text?
• What else would y'all like to know nearly this topic beyond this text?
• How are other authors writing about this topic?
• Where are the disagreements between texts?

iv.2 Identify the Main Idea and Supporting Details

Your college professors will expect you to be able to read independently to sympathize all the data y'all are expected to process in your college texts. Some of your reading assignments volition exist adequately straightforward. Others will be longer and more complex, and then you will demand a plan for how to handle them.

For whatever expository writing—that is, nonfiction, informational writing—your start comprehension goal is to identify the main points and relate any details to those main points. Regardless of what type of expository text you are assigned to read, the chief comprehension goal is to identify the main point: the well-nigh important idea that the writer wants to communicate.  This idea is often stated early on in the introduction and re-emphasized in the decision.

Finding the chief point gives you a framework to organize the details presented in the reading and to relate the reading to concepts you learned in form or through other reading assignments. After identifying the main indicate, find the supporting points: the details, facts, and explanations that develop and analyze the main point.

Tip:
Your instructor may utilise the term "master point" interchangeably with other terms, such equally thesis, primary argument, the principal focus, or core concept.

4.3 Decode Vocabulary

Understanding the vocabulary used in your higher texts is a disquisitional component of reading comprehension.  Having strategies to use when you come up across unfamiliar words will help y'all build and ameliorate your vocabulary.  You can sometimes determine the meaning of a give-and-take by looking inside the word (at its root, prefix, or suffix) or around the word (at the clues given in the judgement or paragraph in which the word appears). If you are unable to determine the meaning of word in context, you may await up the definition.

Each bookish discipline has its ain terminology, and part of your success in all of your college courses volition require y'all to motility across uncomplicated memorization of word meanings to using these terms accordingly within the context of the situation.  This ways existence enlightened that words have different meanings and connotations associated with them, and these meanings and connotations can change depending upon the situation in which they are being used.

Match the right meaning of the word synthesis to the context in which it is beingness used:

Definition #one: the combination of ideas to form a theory or system.

Definition #ii: the production of chemical compounds past reaction from simpler materials.

Context: Your English professor would similar to see you use more synthesis inside the body of your essay.

Answer: Yous may get a declining class on your essay if you combine chemicals to form an explosion, so you improve go with definition #1!

4.4 Utilize Metacognitive Strategies

Because college-level texts can be challenging, you will also need to monitor your reading comprehension. That is, you lot volition need to terminate periodically and assess how well you understand what you are reading. You lot tin improve comprehension past taking time to determine which strategies work best for y'all and putting those strategies into exercise.

Finding the main idea and paying attention to text features as you lot read helps yous figure out what you lot should know. Just as of import, however, is being able to figure out what y'all practise not know and developing a strategy to deal with it.

Textbooks oft include comprehension questions in the margins or at the end of a department or affiliate. Every bit you read, stop occasionally to answer these questions on paper or in your head. Utilize them to place sections yous may need to reread, read more carefully, or inquire your instructor almost later. Even when a text does not take built-in comprehension features, yous can actively monitor your own comprehension.

Try these strategies, adapting them as needed to conform different kinds of texts:

• Summarize. At the end of each section, break to summarize the master points in a few sentences. If you have trouble doing so, revisit that section.
• Inquire and answer questions. When y'all begin reading a section, try to place ii to three questions you should exist able to answer later you finish information technology. Write down your questions and utilise them to test yourself on the reading. If you cannot respond a question, try to determine why.
• Don't read in a vacuum. Look for opportunities to hash out the reading with your classmates. Many instructors prepare online word forums or blogs specifically for that purpose. Participating in these discussions can assistance yous determine whether your understanding of the main points is the same as that of your peers.

iv.5 Read Recursively

Reading is a recursive, rather than linear, activeness. It is rare that y'all will read a text in college once, straight through from beginning to finish. You may demand to read a sentence or paragraph several times to understand it. Your reading volition tiresome down or speed upwardly every bit you run across novel or familiar information. Yous may become "lost" in an example and need to double dorsum or skip ahead to understand the point the author is trying to make.

Yous should plan on reading a text more than once: showtime for full general understanding, and and then to clarify and synthesize the cloth. Reading actively and recursively is the hole-and-corner to becoming an effective reader.

• First Reading – Focus on the literal meaning of the text. What is the author "proverb"? Annotate the text or accept notes to go on runway of the thesis and key points. Use strategies for unfamiliar vocabulary.
• Second Reading – Focus on "how" the writer is communicating. What literary or rhetorical techniques does the author use? Pretend you are having a conversation with the author. What questions exercise you accept? Are there any gaps in the narrative, evidence, or conclusions?
• Further Readings – Are you ready to join in the academic conversation? What additional questions practise you have to further guide you lot inquiry into this topic? How does the text relate to other readings, class discussions, or "real earth" situations? Here are a few questions to consider:
  • What ideas/passages did you find most/least interesting?
  • What did yous learn from the reading that you did not know earlier?
  • Did the author succeed in changing your view on the topic?  Why or why not?
  • What elements of the text did you connect with the almost?
  • What issues do you have with the text?

5. The Active Reading Process

What strategies do I use when I  read?  What strategies do I need to add together?

How many times have y'all read a page in a book, or even just a paragraph, and by the terminate of it thought to yourself, "I take no idea what I just read; I tin't recollect any of it?" Almost anybody has done information technology, and it'southward particularly easy to exercise when you don't care about the material, are non interested in the cloth, or if the textile is full of difficult or new concepts. If yous don't experience engaged with a text, so y'all volition passively read it, failing to pay attention to substance and structure. Passive reading results in zero gains; you will get nil from what you have merely read.

On the other hand, critical reading is based on active reading considering you actively engage with the text, which means thinking about the text before yous begin to read it, request yourself questions as you read it likewise as afterward yous have read information technology, taking notes or annotating the text, summarizing what you have read, and, finally, evaluating the text.

Completing these steps will help you to engage with a text, even if y'all don't find it particularly interesting, which may exist the instance when it comes to assigned readings for some of your classes. In fact, agile reading may fifty-fifty help you to develop an involvement in the text fifty-fifty when yous thought that you initially had none.

By taking an actively disquisitional approach to reading, you will exist able to exercise the post-obit:

• Stay focused while you read the text
• Understand the main idea of the text
• Empathize the overall construction or arrangement of the text
• Retain what yous have read
• Pose informed and thoughtful questions about the text
• Evaluate the effectiveness of ideas in the text

v.one Earlier you read

Establish Your Purpose

Establishing why you lot read something helps you decide how to read it, which saves time and improves comprehension. Before you lot start to read, remind yourself what questions yous want to continue in mind.  (Review Start with a Question section in this affiliate).  And then establish your purpose for reading.

In college and in your profession, you will read a variety of texts to gain and employ information (due east.chiliad., scholarly articles, textbooks, reviews). Some purposes for reading might include the following:

• to scan for specific data
• to skim to get an overview of the text
• to chronicle new content to existing knowledge
• to write something (frequently depends on a prompt)
• to talk over in class
• to critique an argument
• to learn something
• for general comprehension

Strategies differ from reader to reader. The same reader may use unlike strategies for different contexts considering her purpose for reading changes. Ask yourself "why am I reading?" and "what am I reading?" when deciding which strategies work best.

Preview the Text

Once you have established your purpose for reading, the next pace is to preview the text. Previewing a text involves skimming over it and noticing what stands out so that you non only go an overall sense of the text, but you lot likewise acquire the author'southward main ideas before reading for details.  Thus, considering previewing a text helps yous better understand it, you will have meliorate success analyzing it.

Questions to enquire when previewing may include the following:

• What is the championship of the text?  Does information technology give a clear indication of the text's bailiwick?
• Who is the author?  Is the author familiar to you lot?  Is whatever biographical information about the author included?
• If previewing a volume, is in that location a summary on the back or inside the forepart of the book?
• What main idea emerges from the introductory paragraph?  From the terminal paragraph?
• Are there any organizational elements that stand up out, such as section headings, numbering, bullet points, or other types of lists?
• Are in that location any editorial elements that stand out, such as words in italics, bold print, or in a big font size?
• Are there whatsoever visual elements that give a sense of the bailiwick, such as photos or illustrations?

Once you have formed a full general idea about the text by previewing it, the side by side preparatory step for critical reading is to speculate about the author's purpose for writing.

• What practice you lot think the author'due south aim might exist in writing this text?
• What sort of questions do you call up the author might enhance?

Tip:
To skim a text ways to look over a text briefly in gild to go the gist or overall idea of information technology.  When skimming, pay attention to these key parts:

• Title
• Introduction (which give context, background, and introduces the writer's main idea)
• Topic sentences of body paragraphs
• Decision (which ofttimes completes or clarifies the writer'due south thesis or solution)
• Bold or italicized terms

Actuate Your Background Knowledge on the Topic

All of us have a library of life experiences and previous reading knowledge stored in our brains, but this stored knowledge volition sit unused unless we consciously take steps to connect to it or "activate" this cognition.

After previewing a text, ask yourself, "What do I already know virtually this topic?"  If y'all realize that you know very little most the topic or have some gaps, yous may want to pause and do some quick Internet searches to fill in those gaps.

Although Wikipedia is usually not considered a credible source for an academic essay, it can exist a helpful tool to observe what other people are saying nigh the topic, author, or publisher of a text.  Internet searches, online encyclopedias,  news websites may all be used to help you quickly larn some of the key issues related to the topic.

Equally yous read, you should consider what new information you accept learned and how it connects to what you already know.  Making connections betwixt prior knowledge and new information is a disquisitional step in reading, thinking, and learning.

v.2 While you read

Improve Comprehension through Note

Annotating a text means that y'all actively engage with it past taking notes as you read, normally past marking the text in some way (underlining, highlighting, using symbols such equally asterisks) too as by writing down cursory summaries, thoughts, or questions in the margins of the folio.  If you are working with a textbook and prefer not to write in it, annotations tin be fabricated on gluey notes or on a dissever sail of paper.

Regardless of what method you lot choose, annotating not simply directs your focus, merely it also helps you retain that information.  Furthermore, annotating helps you to recall where important points are in the text if you must return to information technology for a writing consignment or class give-and-take.

Tip:
Annotations should non consist of JUST symbols, highlighting, or underlining. Successful and thorough annotations should combine those visual elements with notes in the margin and written summaries; otherwise, y'all may not think why you highlighted that word or judgement in the commencement place.

Figure i.4 "Sample of Says/Does Annotations"

Consider the Unique Qualities of the Text

The style you approach a text should vary based on the type of text you encounter. Reading a poem is very different from reading a chapter in a textbook. At that place are unique structures, elements, and purposes to the various texts you will encounter in college.

Below are some examples of active reading strategies employed with a diverseness of "texts" you might encounter in college including textbooks, scientific research, online media, artwork, and more than.  Detect how the readers approach the text differently based on the length, format, subject matter, and the reader'due south ain purpose for reading.

Textbook	Scholarly Research	Online Media
Reading a Textbook Active Reading	Reading Strategies Database Research Review Skimming and Scanning	Online Sources Judging Online Materials Evaluating Online
Persuasive Text	Literature	Visual Media
Analyzing the Argument Analyzing the Bear witness	Annotating More on Annotating	Visual Rhetoric Art/Visual Media

five.3 After you read

In one case you've finished reading, take time to review your initial reactions from your first preview of the text.  Were any of your before questions answered inside the text?  Was the author's purpose similar to what you had speculated it would be?

The following steps will help you process what you have read so that you lot can move onto the next step of analyzing the text.

• Summarize the text in your own words (note your impressions, reactions, and what you learned)
• Talk to someone about the author's ideas to check your comprehension
• Identify and reread difficult parts of the text
• Review your annotations
• Try to answer some of your own questions from your annotations
• Connect the text to others yous have read or researched on the topic

Once you sympathize the text, the next steps will be to analyze and synthesize the data with other sources and with your own noesis.  Y'all will exist ready to add your perspective, especially if you can provide evidence to support your viewpoint.

Merely like with any new skill, developing your power to read critically will require focus and dedication. With practice, y'all will proceeds confidence and fluency in your ability to read critically.  You volition be ready to join the bookish conversations that surround you at HCC and across.

6. Now What?

After you have taken the fourth dimension to read a text critically, the side by side stride, which is covered in the next chapter, is to clarify the text rhetorically to institute a articulate idea of what the author wrote and how the author wrote it, as well as how effectively the writer communicated the overall message of the text.

Tip:
Students are oft reluctant to seek aid. The truth is, every learner occasionally struggles. If you are sincerely trying to go on upward with the course reading but feel similar you are in over your caput, seek out help. Speak up in course, schedule a meeting with your instructor, or visit your academy learning center for assistance. Bargain with the trouble as early in the semester as you tin. Instructors respect students who are proactive about their own learning. Nearly instructors volition work difficult to help students who make the attempt to assist themselves.

Cardinal Takeaways

• College-level reading and writing assignments differ from loftier school assignments in quantity, quality, and purpose.
• Managing higher reading assignments successfully requires yous to program and manage your time, set a purpose for reading, implement constructive comprehension skills, and utilize agile reading strategies to deepen your agreement of the text.
• Finding the main thought and paying attending to textual features every bit you lot read helps you figure out what you should know. Just as of import, however, is being able to figure out what you do non know and developing a strategy to deal with information technology.
• Ask and answer questions. When you lot brainstorm reading a section, try to identify two to three questions you should be able to respond later you lot cease it. If you cannot answer a question, try to determine why. Active date in the inquiry process is disquisitional to success in college.
• College writing assignments place greater accent on learning to think critically about a item bailiwick and less emphasis on personal and creative writing. Your focus becomes analyzing and synthesizing information to enter into academic conversations.
• Practice not read in a vacuum. Simply put, don't rely solely on your own interpretation. Look for opportunities to discuss the reading in and out of class to help analyze and deepen your understanding.

CC Licensed Content, Shared Previously

English Limerick I , Lumen Learning, CC-BY 4.0.

Rhetoric and Composition, John Barrett, et al., CC-Past-SA iii.0.

Writing for Success,  CC-By-NC-SA 3.0.

Rhetoric and Composition, Bay College, CC-BY 4.0

Paradigm Credits

Effigy 1.i "High School versus Higher Assignments," Cate Bombick, Howard Community College, CC -0, derivative image from "High Schoolhouse Versus College Assignments," Writing for Success , CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0.

Figure 1.2 "Lean In Tweets," Kalyca Schultz, Virginia Western Community College, CC-0.

Figure ane.3 "Example Questions to Ask a Text," Kalyca Schultz, Virginia Western Community College, CC-0 .

Figure 1.4 "Sample Says/Does Note," Karen Kyger, Howard Community College, CC-0.

Originally Composed by Elizabeth Browning; revised by Karen Kyger and Cate Bombick, Howard Community College Kinesthesia

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Source: https://pressbooks.howardcc.edu/criticalreadingcriticalwriting/chapter/chapter-1-critical-reading/

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