Learning Outcome 3:

Learning outcome three state that students must “Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading responses for inquiry, learning and thinking.” Through annotation I believe that I have achieve learning outcome three throughout this semester in English 110. I feel that Susan Gilroy summarized my reading technique perfectly when she writes “It’s also a way to have an ongoing conversation with yourself as you move through the text and to record what that encounter was like for you.” Often when I annotate a text I quickly read through the text first as an informal reading to get a little bit more of an understanding about what I will be reading. Then I go through and actively read the text with a pen in hand and annotate as I read. I feel that this often is a conversation with myself as I move through the text as Susan Gilroy puts it. I often find myself talking out loud when I read asking myself questions and making comments like “I agree,” “I don’t understand,” “Why does the author think that.” As seen in my annotation of “The Future of Science… Is Art” by John Lehrer. After I am finished reading and annotating I feel that this is where critical reading for me takes place, sometimes I go back through and reread the parts that I had not fully understood while reading and annotating the first time, and this is the point for me when I form my true opinion of a piece of writing. Another really helpful activity that I enjoy doing after reading and essay is the in class reading activity, I feel like it can be really helpful to hear everyone else’s opinion on a essay to help me form my own, and to help build a better understand the reading. Other than this structured reading process I go through, when it comes to my annotations I don’t really have a structure, I just allow myself to write the things I am saying and thinking about the text in the moment. I tend to highlight strong claim sentences or things that I think would make a good supporting argument or underline things that don’t make sense or circle things stand out to me. It is truly random my annotations, but it is what I feel personally catches my eye and draws my attention at the time. Even though this is not the most organized process compared to other methods this allows me to gather my thoughts and opinions on a piece of writing and makes me able to interrogate my thoughts with other writers thoughts and create a well written paper with good supporting evidence.