My approach to active, critical reading was annotating the articles and the journals we had to do. The way I annotated was highlighting important sentences, writing in the margins, and putting question marks near words or sentences I did not understand or wanted to talk about. I would decide what was important depending on if I could use it in my essays or I could talk about it in class. Also, I decided by whether I can relate to it or how I feel about what I highlight. I would highlight sentences I agreed with or disagreed with and then i would write things in the margins so I could quickly go back when I needed to use the paragraph for an example or quote it. When I read articles, I would ask what certain things meant and what the author wanted to get across or want the reader to think about. I would try to compare articles to each other or see if they were talking about the some of the same ideas but had different ways of thinking about a topic. If i did not understand something in the article, I would reread it over again to see if I could understand it.
In my journals, I talked about my point of view when reading the articles. I stated my opinions and used examples from the text to structure why I perceived the articles the way I did. The journals were one way for me to think about how the articles compared, contrasted, or overlapped with each other or the theme of the course. When I read articles, I sometimes have to reread the article or parts of the article to make sure I understand it and take away the right ideas from the article. Talking about the readings in my journals helped me shape my ideas better.
