Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

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Making Marginal Notes
Recording your questions and reactions in the margins
turns you from a passive receiver of information into
an active participant in a dialogue. (If you’re reading a
library book, write your reactions in a notebook.) You
will get much more out of the ideas and information
you read about if you create a “conversation” with the
writer. Here are some examples of the kinds of reac-
tions you might write down in the margin or in your
notebook:
■
Questions often come up when you read. They
may be answered later in the text, but by that time,
you may have forgotten the question! And if your
question isn’t answered, you may want to discuss it
with someone: “Why does the writer describe the
new welfare policy as ‘unfair’?” or “Why does the
character react in this way?”
■
Agreements and disagreements with the author
are bound to arise if you’re actively reading. Write
them down: “That’s not necessarily true!” or “This
policy makes a lot of sense to me.”
■
Connections you note can be either between the
text and something that you read earlier or
between the text and your own experience.
For example, “I remember feeling the same way
when I . . .” or “This is similar to what happened
in China.”
■
Evaluations are your way of keeping the author
honest. If you think the author isn’t providing suf-
ficient support for what he or she is saying or that
there’s something wrong with that support, say so:
“He says the dropping of the bomb was inevitable,
but he doesn’t explain why” or “This is a very
selfish reason.”
Making Observations
Good readers know that writers use many different
strategies to express their ideas. Even if you know very
little about those strategies, you can make useful obser-
vations about what you read to better understand and
remember the author’s ideas. You can notice, for exam-
ple, the author’s choice of words; the structure of the
sentences and paragraphs; any repetition of words or
ideas; important details about people, places, and
things; and so on.
This step—making observations—is essential
because your observations (what you notice) lead you
to logical inferences about what you read. Inferences are
conclusions based on reason, fact, or evidence. You are
constantly making inferences based on your observa-
tions, even when you’re not reading. For example, if
you notice that the sky is full of dark, heavy clouds, you
might infer that it is going to rain; if you notice that
your coworker has a stack of gardening books on her
desk, you might infer that she likes gardening.
If you misunderstand what you read, it is often
because you haven’t looked closely enough at the text.
As a result, you base your inferences on your own ideas
and experiences, not on what’s actually written in the
text. You end up forcing your own ideas on the author
(rather than listening to what the author has to say) and
then forming your own ideas about it. It’s critical, then,
that you begin to really pay attention to what writers say
and how they say it.
If any of this sounds confusing now, don’t worry.
Each of these ideas will be thoroughly explained in the
lessons that follow. In the meantime, start practicing
active reading as best you can. Begin by taking the
pretest.