Reading Skills

Basic Composition and Basic Composition with Reading are both writing classes, so you might be wondering why we include a section called "Reading Skills." One way or another, reading is always part of the writing process. Even if you are writing something as simple as a shopping list, or as personal as an email to your best friend, you will probably take a few minutes to read over what you've written, check to see if there's anything you want to add, and clarify here and there. In your Writing Program class, your teacher will always ask you to write papers that engage with other people's ideas, which means that you will read other writers' work in the process of writing your own papers. The more effectively you read, the more effectively you will write.

Your teacher will probably give suggestions—either through handouts, assignments, or class discussion—to help you read more productively. In addition to those resources, this page provides links to a comprehensive set of "skills" for strong readings.

These are strategies that we have observed our strongest students using, and that we have found effective in our own reading practice. There are a lot of suggestions here, and you might find that you don't remember them all. It's a good idea to refer back to these "Reading Skills" pages several times during the semester—perhaps every time you begin a new reading assignment, or at times when you feel "stuck" in the reading process. Like every other text you read, you probably won't "get" all of these suggestions the first time through, but if you keep coming back, you'll find more and more of them useful.

Click on these links for lots of suggestions for each part of the reading process.

General Strategies for Effective Reading
Reading a Text for the First Time
Re-Reading (or, the most important part of reading)
Reading Difficult Passages
Reading Your Colleagues' Papers
Reading Your Own Papers