1. Critical Reading and Annotating
English B50
Critical Reading and Annotating

2. The sell… Why go to college? Some potential answers Stable job Money
Financial independence
A nice car/house
Do these look familiar?

3. Other benefits Discover more about yourself and the world around you
Be better able to contribute to society and take action against injustice
Be protected against unscrupulous people who attempt to take advantage of you
Become a “deep learner”

4. What is “deep learning”?
“To take a deep approach means to take control of your own education, to decide that you want to understand, to create something new, to search for the meaning that lies behind the text, to realize that words on a page are mere symbols, and that behind those symbols lies a meaning that has a connection with a thousand other aspects of your life and with your own personal development” (38).
Ken Bain, Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of the District of Columbia, from What the Best College Students Do

5. You, too, can become a “deep learner”!
Deep learning is about investment in your education and reading beyond the end goal of the exam or essay. Read to learn, not to achieve a grade or score.
If you want to get the most out of a text, how should you approach the reading?

6. Environment
There’s no right place to be a critical reader, but here is some food for thought.
Quiet places with few distractions are usually best.
“Numerous experiments have found that with the exception of a very few routine tasks that we’ve done repeatedly over many years, the human brain can’t really perform two tasks simultaneously” (Bain 248).
If you feel that you are unable to focus in a quiet environment, keep this in mind:
“You must be honest with yourself…and distinguish between what you want to do and what really works” (Bain 249).

7. Time
You’ve got busy lives with lots of obligations in addition to your school work: you’ll need to prioritize activities and keep a schedule.
I would recommend working backwards; start with the big picture of the entire semester. How many classes are you taking? What are the big events in those classes (exams, presentations, papers, etc.)?

8. Scheduling
Once you have the big dates in place, you can work on a weekly schedule. Here are some items to include on your calendar
Do you work outside of school? How many hours per week?
Do you have family obligations? Are there times, for example, you will be watching children and therefore unable to do school work?
Don’t forget to budget adequate time for everyday tasks like eating, sleeping, and exercising
You can get blank calendars at BC’s habits of mind website:

9. How much time should it really take?
For every hour of class, you’ll be expected to spend 2 hours outside of class on class related work.
Since our class is a compressed class, you’ll be spending about 16 hours OUTSIDE of class and other responsibilities on work for our class.

10. Work smart, not hard We all have moments like these:
What do you do to combat this?

11. Active Reading
Reading actively means engaging with the text, interacting with it so that you are an active participant in the making of meaning, rather than passively scanning the text

12. Annotating
Annotating, or taking notes while you read, is an excellent way to stay focused on what you read and thus get more out of it.
There are lots of ways to take notes. You might
Summarize small passages in your own words
Define unfamiliar terms in the margins
Identify main ideas of paragraphs
Make personal connections or connections to other classes/pieces of information
Ask questions of the text or mark areas of confusion

13. Highlighting
Highlighting can be an effective means of annotating a text. However, it’s best to have a plan, because

14. Persistence
There will be times that you will struggle to find meaning in the reading. The vocabulary will challenge you, the connections will elude you—do not give up.
Learn to embrace confusion and see it as an opportunity for growth. Remember that learning is a process that takes time. Don’t succumb to learned helplessness and say that you tried to do the assigned reading but couldn’t because “it was hard”.

15. But it’s “boring”…
You’ve got to find meaning and relevance in the material you’re reading. I’ll do my best to help you with this with our pre-reading activities, but engagement is a two-way street.
“[Treat]… the printed word as a window through which…[you] can see anything” (Bain 233).

16. Guided Reading
If all else fails, remember that the reading you do for our class will almost always translate to a writing assignment of some sort—your annotations are like instant pre-writing. Your diligence will pay off!

17. Practice
Read “How to Fail in College and in Life” using the active reading strategies we went over today—highlight, annotate, look up new words, etc.
Look especially for the author’s thesis statement (or controlling idea), support, purpose, and target audience.