These are some techniques to help you develop critical reading skills.

Let us apply each one to

the previous text.

*Keeping a reading journal.

Have you ever kept a diary? A reading journal is similar to keeping a diary, except you are
writing your feelings and ideas in reaction to your reading assignment. This process allows you
to develop your impressions of the text and connect them to your personal experiences. This
allows you to better relate to the essay and understand the author’s ideas.

A reading journal helps us remember and organize our memories of a story. It makes us stop
and think and helps develop reflective and critical thinking skills. It is always a way of keeping
important details about the story together, to use in further class discussions or projects.

*Annotating the text

Annotating the text simply means making notes on your copy of the reading. This includes
highlighting or underlining important passages and writing notes, comments, questions, and
reactions on the margins. It is usually the best to annotate the text after you have read it more
than once to ensure that you understand it properly.

*Outlining the text

Creating a rough outline to the text will also be helpful in getting to understand it more
critically. By locating the thesis statement claims, and evidence, and then plotting these into an
outline, you can see how the writers structure, sequences, and connects his or her ideas. This
way you will be able to better evaluate the quality of the writing.

*Summarizing the text

Summarizing the text is similar to outlining, in that you need to get the gist. A summary consist
of getting the main concepts/points of the essay and important supporting details. Summarizing is
a useful skills because you can better understand the reading if you can recognize the
differentiate major and minor points of the text.

*Questioning the text

Involves asking specific questions on points that you are sceptical about. Questioning is a
strategy that readers use to engage with the text. Questioning techniques help the reader to
clarify and comprehend what he is reading. Struggling readers tend not to ask questions of
themselves or the text as they read.
. What type of audience is addressed?
. What are the writer’s intentions?