Help College Students Become Better Readers
Critical Reading Skills Can be Taught for Essays and Non-Fiction
Mar 22, 2009
Close reading is a self-conscious type of reading. It is almost like watching yourself read, noticing what words or phrases catch your attention and shape your sense of what a text expresses and what it means. Students tend to be more familiar — hence, comfortable — with questions like "What does the writer (or text) seem to be saying?" or "What does the writer (or text) mean?" But it is equally important to consider how one comes to their ideas about a text's meanings.
Goal of Exercise
In this exercise, students can examine both the ideas that a text presents and the elements in it that led them to their sense of these ideas. Students will find that this kind of reading takes more time. Close reading is different from merely moving through a text from the beginning to end — reading to get the assignment done- — or losing oneself in the process of reading the text. But the pay off is in the amount of material a student can begin to comprehend, to wrestle with, to take into their student writing.
Part I: Read the Entire Text Without Taking Notes or Marking
1. Read through your chosen text (or an assigned passage from it), without taking notes or marking the text.
2. As soon as finished, jot down all the details you can remember. That is, free write or list elements, images, and ideas you recall from the text being as specific as you can. You can do this on a piece of paper or on note cards, in your journal, or in the margins of your text.
3. Look over the notes you have jotted down. See whether any patterns develop from the material you recalled. Ask yourself such things as:
- Do individual details relate to one another or have certain features in common?
- How might my notes relate to the ideas the writer was trying to express? (Notes; often a student reader goes off in her or his own imaginative rendering and looses what the writer is actually saying.)
4. Conclude this part of exercise by recording your observations. Be honest with this part. This give your the feedback you need to have on how well you are taking in the actual text, not just re-inventing it.
Tip: If you find you cannot recall many specifics move on to Part II which will slow down your reading.
Part II: Reading More Slowly; Taking Notes While You Read
A. Read through your chosen text again, this time marking the things that stand out to you as you go.
B. Read slowly, just a paragraph or "chunk" of text at a time.
C. Star, circle or underline anything that stands out: repeated words or phrases; odd or particularly pleasing or moving language patterns; moments that seem to articulate directly (or even just hint at) significant ideas. This includes:
- analogies, images or figures of speech that help (or hinder) your understanding;
- words or phrases that bother you or make you uncomfortable
- things that you underline, star, or circle without knowing why, just for "the heck of it"
C. When you've finished this process, step back from the text and jot possible answers to those familiar questions mentioned at the start of this exercise: "What is the writer or text expressing?" "What does the writer or text seem to mean?"
TIP: Here you are attempting to summarize, to offer some conclusions, based on your general recollections of the reading.
Part III: Read Through the Markings; Look for the Patterns
1. Go back now to the markings you made while reading the text.
2. Try to identify particular moments or details that might have led you to the conclusions you just reached first or second time through.
3. Ask yourself if there are:
- certain things that got lost or buried that might need more consideration.
- certain images or ideas that stayed with you and shaped your conclusions.
4. Finally, ask yourself if some conclusions require more refocusing or a different emphases? Some ideas you may have picked up intuitively but now can see where the text also supports these ideas. Your intuition is now backed up by the text.
Source: The Original Text-Wrestling Book. Curtis, A., Balthaser, Edwards, M.,etc. Foreword by Peter Elbow. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt (2001).
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