Learning Outcome 3

When I approach active and critical reading, I do so mainly by asking a lot of questions. As Gilroy mentions in her piece, asking questions is a form of having a conversation with yourself, and this helps to clarify ideas and help to grasp the concepts of a piece. For example, in my annotations for Michael Erard’s essay, I ask a lot of questions to sort of start off my conversation with the author, and for clarification purposes to further research later. Along with asking questions, another thing I like to do is relate the main ideas of an assigned text to what we are discussing in class, and how it relates to other texts we’ve been assigned, as I demonstrate in my Erard annotations by connecting what he says to the TED talk we had analyzed previously. Taking note of these instances promotes deeper thinking and a better sense of the issues we deal with throughout this course. Deciding what to mark comes from what sections of a text sparks a reaction from me, whether it’s informal like marking “wow!” when a statement has sparked interest or more traditional reactions like questions or connections to my personal life. Pursuing the role as a doubter is also a major part of “interrogating” my text. Being able to look at an opinion critically gives me the opportunity to look at a different perspective from the author’s, whether that happens naturally or as a devil’s advocate. Continuing the conversation by exploring the different pathways an argument could go down helps me to fully understand a concept or idea. Because of this, I believe that this shows overall that I am a very skeptical writer; I like to ask a lot of questions and I like to look at things from all perspectives before deciding on my stance. This method has proved beneficial for me throughout this semester and is a practice I plan on continuing throughout my academic career.