Composition, Critical Reading & Thinking Through Literature
How to Primary Critical Thinking past Using a Strategy for Critical Reading
Use the SQ3R strategy to acquire faster and more completely, and amend your disquisitional thinking and creativity
Whether y'all are a author, a business executive, or in any field of cocky-improvement, y'all are no incertitude inundated past texts: news manufactures on your phone, school textbooks, hundreds of pages of a business report. You slog through one long report afterwards another until they all merge into an amorphous blob of gunk. Only what if I told you, just by systematizing your human action of reading, y'all volition gain complete mastery over everything y'all read with very footling additional effort?
Mastering your readi n g is a key skill that enables you to think critically and clearly nigh any subject matter. And thinking critically well-nigh whatsoever discipline will take you from novice pursuer to expert influencer.
In "On Writing Well," William Zinsser says, "Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other." To become clear thinkers, we must also be strong readers. An established strategy for critical reading can take your disquisitional thinking to the next level and help you lot to reach your goals. Clear thinking + critical thinking = powerful clear writing.
Since 1986, when I outset started teaching college limerick and English, I have introduced thousands of students to the SQ3R method of critical reading. I have seen beginning and developmental students blossom into first-rate scholars and thinkers using this method.
I was always a slow, methodical reader myself. At that place is some validity in reading literary texts slowly and closely, paying attention to the special linguistic communication of literature. But large theoretical texts were my enemy. I could rip through a novel, but when I was done, I had forgotten much of what I had read. Reading a lengthy textbook, I could non tell the difference between primary points and supporting ideas. I needed a strategy that was more than highlighting of import passages.
When I get-go started using the SQ3R method myself, I saw results within a matter of weeks. The SQ3R method helped me to systematize my heavy reading load and improved my comprehension and retrieve. Now, I read quickly with solid comprehension. I have the conviction to master whatever reading material.
At the start of my teaching career, I knew that helping my students meant education them a strategy for critical reading. Just the SQ3R method has applications beyond the university. It is an constructive method for anyone who engages with complex texts. By using the SQ3R method, you tin truly chief whatever reading material to advance your career or to empathize the subtleties of even the most difficult texts.
Disquisitional Thinking Leads to New Knowledge
We create new knowledge in the world past building on meridian of good cognition of the past. Disquisitional thinking means that you do non just accept what an author presents. By reading critically, you read skeptically, questioning the writer against your own knowledge and your own world view. Sometimes your ideas will align with an author'due south. But ofttimes, your world view and the writer'south will collide.
Reading is a discovery procedure. We aren't just empty vessels that get filled by the cup of noesis. When we read, we are in a symbiotic human relationship with the author and we create new significant and new knowledge. Past following a strategy for critical reading, y'all tin identify the strengths and weaknesses of an argument or an approach and develop a new way forward. The author'southward view plus your own will atomic number 82 to new knowledge. The SQ3R method will assist yous to identify areas of a text that you can argue with in order to create a new agreement of the world.
When reading, if all we needed to practice was to accept an author'southward point and so spit information technology back, we would be hopelessly stuck in presenting a world view every bit if it were a 4th-grade current events or book report: This is what the author said. This passive reading strategy is important for immature kids as outset readers, only in one case we become a fiddling older, nosotros must read much more actively to not only understand what authors say, but to develop our own ideas virtually the world. This is where SQ3R comes in. You already know how to read. SQ3R will systematize your reading to maximize your comprehension and make reading efficient.
SQ3R — A Strategy for Critical Reading
SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. SQ3R was developed by Francis Pleasant Robinson, an educational psychologist in his 1946 book "Constructive Written report," to meliorate the reading skills of armed forces personnel. The strategy is nigh useful for highly structured texts, just it can be used with fiction and or shorter works just as effectively. By following the 5-part structure, y'all can become an active reader and improve your disquisitional thinking skills.
Stride 1 — Survey: Wait before you leap
Survey: The first stride is to survey the text — quite literally look at the textile. If you lot accept a 1,000-folio text to read, yous demand to beginning empathize what it is you're dealing with. Look at the volume without reading information technology. Await at the front and back covers and inside the front end and back covers. Flip through the table of contents. And then page by folio, flip through the pages, all of them, from first to end.
If you are working with an e-book, of course, you may need to brand some adjustments to this stride. Still, you can survey the table of contents, detect the length of the book, how information technology is structured, and (if you can) curl through the pages. I read and teach using concrete books, and this article is based on applying the SQ3R method to them. You will need to detect the best mode of applying these techniques to e-books.
Don't read the text just even so. A blueprint will sally. You will run across a systematic presentation of ideas in the structure of the book. You volition come across chapter titles, subheadings, and sub-sub-headings. In academic textbooks, you may see new vocabulary presented in bold or italic blazon. You may encounter illustrations or graphs or lists of activities at the ends of chapters. Y'all may come across examples illustrated. Flip through the entire volume. Surveying your text is an important step, the foundation for the rest of the strategy.
If your fabric is shorter, this process takes much less time. Look at an essay, for example. What is the title and author? Are in that location subtitles? How many paragraphs are there? Is there whatever white infinite? Does any text stand out? Whatever the reading, annotation the structure of the piece as you survey it.
The human brain is a miraculous organ. It discerns patterns in all that it sees. By surveying the text, yous are setting upward your encephalon to subconsciously understand the patterns that you lot are presenting to it. In short, your brain makes meaning from those patterns. Yous are creating the framework for your brain to empathise the cloth. This skeletal outline provides structure for the book's content, much as your skeleton helps you to stand upright. Without that structure, the content would be a loose jelly, difficult to comprehend in whatever structured way.
Pace 2 — Question: Creating a programme of discovery
The second step is to write questions for each subtitle in the text. Write downwardly questions based on the affiliate titles and sub-headings. For example, in a textbook on writing, there may be a section on Prewriting. One of the subheadings may be Freewriting. On a piece of paper, write downwards "What is Freewriting?" Become through the entire reading and write questions for each chapter title and subheading.
At this time, you may be tempted to write down answers to those questions, especially as those answers swim in the text in front end of yous. For now, it is best to write down all the questions outset and wait to answer them during the reading portion of the strategy.
A note on writing: Writing downward material improves memory. When I use SQ3R, I write the questions with pen and paper, even though I spend the vast majority of my fourth dimension typing. The mechanical ways in which you record the information is up to you. I encourage you lot to write or type out your questions. You will use those written questions when you read the material.
Step iii — Reading: Turn off all distractions and read
The third step is reading. Reading the text is a two-step process. The first time yous read the text, do so without a pencil. Merely read it apace to discern the principal ideas and structure of the text. The 2d time through, y'all will read carefully and annotate the text.
Start, read the text without a pencil. Find a quiet place and read the fabric. Turn off distractions, such every bit your phone and the goggle box. I find that having soft music or classical music in the background improves my concentration. Researchers propose that classical music puts "students in a heightened emotional land, making them more receptive to information."
If your reading selection is large, preview it first and possibly interruption it into more than one reading session.
Reading is a muscle-memory activity. Information technology takes v–10 minutes to get into reading. Nosotros can and so read comfortably and at peak operation for about 40–60 minutes. Afterwards that, our minds commencement to wander and we demand a break. Take a interruption for 5–10 minutes to rest your eyes and stretch. Milk shake out your body and rest your brain for a few minutes. Then continue your reading or wait until the adjacent session.
Reading part two: Annotate the text. Annotating the text volition help you to understand the patterns of the text. You are targeting your reading to find the main points of the text. How tin can you tell what is important in a body of water of text? Professional writing is elaborately edited and arranged. Topic sentences present main ideas. Middles of paragraphs provide supporting information and examples. Final sentences present have-away points.
Fifty-fifty sentences themselves are well-structured. Good writers nowadays topics equally their subjects and main points as their predicates. The middles of sentences are details and supporting materials.
If the writer writes, "The significant betoken is…" or "The main indicate is…" or "The virtually important point to remember is…," then you know the point is something to comment or highlight.
Knowing where to discover the most important data volition help you find the essential points.
Await for the answers to the questions you lot wrote in step 2. When you find an respond, write it down. If an answer is not presented direct, the answer may be implied. Write down whatever answer you tin can infer from the text.
When you lot annotate a text, you are reading actively. Write all over the text. If you're working with paper, yous will develop your ain symbol system, equally I accept. (Here again, for e-books you will need to determine what you lot tin can do based on the due east-reader you employ. Because of those limitations, y'all may find it worthwhile to work with a printed book instead, peculiarly for important texts.)
I underline master points. I circle words I don't know. I look the give-and-take up in a skillful dictionary and write "def" in the margin along with the definition. If I agree with the author'south point, I write "Yes!" in the margin. If I'thousand skeptical of the author's point, I write, "Hmmm" to indicate I must retrieve about that bespeak some more. If I disagree with the author, I will write "B.S!" or something similar in the margin. If I meet a pattern such as "Commencement … 2nd … Third …" I put boxes around those structural elements and draw lines betwixt the words. If I have my ain thoughts or comments about a passage, I write it in the margins. When I'grand done, my text is marked up with all my comments for when I look at the material again.
In my case, I have made many marginal comments trying to follow the thread of the argument. De Beauvoir has an all-encompassing vocabulary, so to be precise, I look upwardly whatsoever word that may even remotely accept nuanced pregnant. I will look upwardly words I think I know well, only to find out that I had an imprecise working pregnant of a word. Information technology is of import to be honest with yourself and look up words that you don't know or that you can know more precisely than you do.
Develop a organization to annotate a text that makes sense to you. Whatever you do, write on your text. If you do non want to write in your volume, make a copy of your reading and write all over the copy. Annotating the text is a crucial pace in making the cloth your own.
On highlighting: I have seen many beginning students highlight entire pages of text. When everything is highlighted, null stands out. It's the aforementioned as not highlighting annihilation. Use highlighting sparingly. I reserve highlighting for but the primary point of each affiliate, if I highlight at all.
Footstep iv — Recite: Give vocalism to your ideas
The quaternary pace is to recite the chief points of the text aloud to a friend or to yourself. When we enunciate any cloth, we create a memory of information technology in our brain. Telling a friend well-nigh your reading will help y'all to remember it. It will too help you to elaborate on whatsoever disagreements you lot may have with the text. Why do you lot disagree with the author and what is your ain position? It is not enough to simply disagree with an author'south signal. You must likewise strive to articulate the reason for your disagreement, which will assistance you to articulate your own position on the topic. This step in critical thinking is important in making new knowledge for the earth.
Step v — Review: Reinforce the unabridged process to truly make the text your own
The fifth and last step is to review the text. As you glance your eyes over the text now, you will be looking at the textile for the sixth fourth dimension. You volition take in not just the author's points simply your own active reading of the text.
After passing your eyes and critical gaze over the text vi times, I guarantee that, if you take been faithful to the SQ3R method, you will have control of the majority of the fabric. Your job is not to memorize the text, though there volition be parts of it that y'all know verbatim. Rather, your task has been to command the textile, to know the main points and the structure of the writing, to know its strengths and weaknesses, and to know your own reaction and attitudes toward that material. In combination with the author, you have now become an proficient on this material and created new knowledge.
You are now ready to do something with this new cognition — whether it is presenting that information to a board of directors or taking a test in school or writing an article that incorporates some other author's position within your own argument.
Using the SQ3R strategy for disquisitional reading may dull your reading down initially, peculiarly equally you lot write focused questions and develop a workable annotation scheme. But if you lot apply this strategy consistently, y'all will achieve noticeable improvements in command and comprehension of your reading.
Reading is oft the beginning step for learning new noesis, but information technology is besides a first stride in creating new knowledge. The SQ3R strategy for disquisitional reading will help you to understand any reading, from the most complex to the most niggling. It will increase your engagement with your reading, helping you to recollect critically well-nigh what you read, rather than being a passive receptacle, and enabling you to create new knowledge for the earth.
We do non just discover the world through reading. We create the world we inhabit. At present information technology is your plow to create the beautiful world where y'all want to live.
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