0:00
Before we move on to marking texts, we're going to consider one more area of questions that we can ask when we're rereading a text. And these are questions about our reactions and responses—questions about your reactions and responses.
0:18
First question, How do I feel about the topic or the issues or the findings addressed within the reading?
0:27
Second question, What's convincing? And then, What's unclear? And to go along with both of those, Why do I think this is convincing? Or, Why do I find this unclear? Or even, [Why do I find this] clearer [than that]?
0:43
Third question, What ideas in the piece contradict my understanding of the topic?
0:51
Fourth question, What ideas in the piece are new to me? Which ones do I accept? And which ones do I reject? And why? This is a very important group of questions to ask about a text because people's beliefs and knowledge influence how they read material, what they take note of, what they understand the author to be saying, what they remember after they read the piece, etc.
1:18
Understanding your response to the material you read can help you become a more critical reader and a more effective writer in several ways. First, honestly assessing your response can help you be balanced and fair. As a skeptical reader, you need to be both critical of ideas you, at first, enthusiastically support and open to ideas you, at first, strongly reject. Second, examining your response to what you read can help you decide on and develop effective paper topics. See, your responses may help you identify an interest or question that you can later pursue more thoroughly in an essay.
1:59
Especially consider what you learned from a reading. For example, What information is new? How do the author's ideas or findings confirm or contradict what you have come to think? Examining your answers to questions such as these can result in some interesting essays as well as some important moments of reflective experience—which, of course, can then be moved into an essay format.