EmpoWord: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers

Appendix B: Engaged Reading Strategies 459 Appendix B Engaged Reading Strategies There are a lot of ways to become a better writer, but the best way I know is to read a lot. Why? Not only does attentive reading help you understand grammar and mechanics more intuitively, but it also allows you to develop your personal voice and critical worldviews more deliberately. By encountering a diversity of styles, voices, and perspectives, you are likely to identify the ideas and techniques that resonate with you; while your voice is distinctly yours , it is also a unique synthesis of all the other voices you’ve been exposed to. But it is important to acknowledge that the way we read matters. At some point in your academic career, you’ve probably encountered the terms “ active reading ” or “ critical reading .” But what exactly does active reading entail? It begins with an acknowledgment that reading, like writing, is a process: active reading is complex, iterative, and recursive, consisting of a variety of different cognitive actions. Furthermore, we must recognize that the reading process can be approached many different ways, based on our backgrounds, strengths, and purposes. However, many people don’t realize that there’s more than one way to read; our early training as readers fosters a very narrow vision of critical literacy. For many generations in many cultures across the world, developing reading ability has generally trended toward efficiency and comprehension of main ideas. Your family, teachers, and other folks who taught you to read trained you to read in particular ways. Most often, novice readers are encouraged to ignore detail and nuance in the name of focus: details are distracting. Those readers also tend to project their assumptions on a text. This practice, while useful for global understanding of a text, is only one way to approach reading; by itself, it does not constitute “engaged reading.” In her landmark article on close reading, Jane Gallop explains that ignoring details while reading is effective, but also problematic: