Let's Find Out How To Read....

Today’s assignment was reading strategies. We all know how to read, right? That’s exactly what I was thinking when I looked at the chapter before I read it. When I think about reading I think about reading for pleasure or reading textbooks for school. When I read for pleasure I am usually very precise, knowing what I am reading about and giving myself a little summery every once in a while before I go on. When I am reading a textbook for school I usually just skim and scan the chapters or paragraphs for the main points that I think I might need.
As I was doing my assignment today I learned that I’m not completely wrong, but I’m also not completely right about how to read. They said the same things as me about some strategies to reading such as; skimming and scanning etc. What I didn’t think of when thinking about reading strategies is all the other things that they mentioned. I know how to do them all but I just never really thought about using them to read. They say you should preview a text first before you read it, to kind of get a feel for what you are about to be reading. I think that is a good strategy; it’s about the same as skimming over something before you read it, normally how I do things. They also talked about annotating, which is highlighting key words or phrases and seeing how the different ideas connect to the reading. This is also a strategy that I have used many times before but never would have thought of as a reading strategy. When I read a textbook it’s all about highlighting the main points. I like to highlight them so when I go back over it to study I know exactly what I have to study and where it’s at in my book, making things so much easier. Like I said when I am reading for pleasure I like to summarize to myself what is going on in the text so it is easier for me to remember. They say the exact same thing, summarizing can make it easier to pick out the main points or how the ideas relate to each other. Something that I have never really thought of before are patterns in writing. This could be anything; recurring words or phrases, or even the use of the same person over and over again. Identifying these patterns can make the reading experience a whole lot easier.
It wasn’t a bad reading; I definitely did not like it as much as some of the past ones. It was a good thing though because like I said, we all know how to read right? Well, I guess that is wrong. I guess I judged to quickly because I actually did learn a little something from this.