Chapter 1: The role of good reading

Learning to read takes a lot of work. We have to learn the alphabet and the sounds certain letters make and of course there are exceptions to every rule. But now, we have to learn to read correctly, as reading in depth and analyzing the work.

Rereading is something I have always taken for granted, but important to do especially if you don't understand what the author is talking about. It's worth the time and energy to reread if it helps my understanding.

Critical reading: Annotating. Love and hate it. I love it because it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something and picking apart the author's work into my own words. I hate it because it's time consuming and sometimes there's just no reason to annotate.
And when it comes to using reference materials, this is something I definitely don't do on a regular basis. If I don't know a word, and the person I'm studying with doesn't know it, then it stays unknown. But this is a really bad habit. It takes three seconds to look up a definition on google so I should really start taking advantage of that.

Asking questions about the text is the hardest part because you have to think of the questions before you can answer them. Most of the time we subconsciously ask and answer the questions we have about the text while we are reading it. But more in depth questions take a little time.

When it comes to questions about the author, finding out about the author's life makes their work that much more interesting to me even if their life had nothing to do with the work.

When reading, cultural context does come into play and it is important to know what the culture was like during the author's time to understand a work sometimes. For example, things are very different now than they were in the 1800's and the book uses the example of attitude toward death then and now--it's really different. Back then it was a fact of life-people dropped like flies. Today, there is a cure for everything. Therefore, a piece about death today might contrast sharply with the tone of a piece about death back then.

It's so important to know who the listener is in a work, just as it is to know who the speaker is.

Reading is no longer reciting your ABC's or memorizing a Dr. Seuss story that your mother has read to you 213 times. No. Reading is for big kids now.