Learning Outcome 3
When “interrogating” a text I first try to keep an open mind. With a pen in hand, I read as if I am having a conversation with the author and I respond either in my head or on the page. When annotating a paper I do a lot of underlining of course but I usually try to add a note to things I feel are important. Whether this note is an opinion, criticism, question, comment, possible quotation for my essay or even something funny to keep me engaged in the essay. I will also look up any words I do not know and find a definition of to writing into the margin. If I don’t quite get what the author is saying then ill question them or put a question mark next to the underlined text. I go through these steps the first time I read through the essay. Before I read through a second time I like to look back at the prompt for the essay we are writing and reread that so I know what I am looking for the second time around. I usually grab a different colored pen and go quotation hunting as I read through. This takes longer than the first read because I try to argue for an against potential quotation I find. Just about all of these habits are found in Susan Gilroy’s “interrogating texts”. I often find myself doing her habit of asking myself questions. This can be exhibited in my annotated text of “to answer our most fundamental questions, science needs to find a place for the arts?” asking questions like where is he going with this? Or what is he trying to argue? Overall my active reading skills have greatly improved over this course of this class.
