Learning Outcome #3

(Active Reading) – Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking. (Word Count 401)

Before the semester, the extent of my annotating process was to highlight text that I thought might be applicable to an assignment at a later date. As I reflect upon that process, I realize that only highlighting words on a page is a very superficial method of annotating. This is to say that I didn’t engage with a text or gain a deeper meaning of it. Furthermore, I would rarely follow up the reading with a written analysis. This cursory approach to annotating limited my ability to understand texts, and therefore diminished the quality of my work.  

At the beginning of the semester however, I was encouraged to establish a meaningful and recursive habit of annotating. By making it a priority to employ techniques of active reading I found that my understanding of texts increased, and when it came time to write an essay I had already formed a viewpoint.

The types of annotations that helped me the most were annotating to understanding the text, relating the piece to myself or the world, and challenging or extending ideas in the text. An example of this was my constant questioning of Paul Bloom’s piece, “Is Empathy Overrated?” (Image 1).

As I began to question Bloom’s claims, I found myself increasingly opposed to his position on the value of empathy. This positioned me against his arguments and ultimately I argued against his theories in my second paper. Furthermore, I even used the questioning of this claim to implement a naysayer statement into my essay (Image 2).

In addition to employing the active reading techniques of questioning, I also used annotations to develop a better understanding of certain terms and ideas. An example of this was the graph I drew to better visualize and understand what Robin Dunbar’s rule of three and Dunbar number meant (Image 3).

This scan of an annotation in Konnikova’s text helped me understand the rule of three and Dunbar number by visualizing the terms. I ended up using these terms as I continued to employ active reading techniques through informal reading responses. In my Konnikova reading response I outlined these terms with ease, and was able to give an in-depth analysis (Image 4).

The use of active reading techniques ultimately proved effective not only as a tool to gain a better understanding of the text, but also because I directly used this analysis in my final paper (Image 5).