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Reading Skills: Reading a Text for the First Time

• Who is the author? Does the name sound familiar to you? If so, what do you know about this writer, and what might you expect to find in the essay?

• Does the essay have a title? What do the individual words in the title mean? What might they mean grouped together? Based on the title alone, what ideas and issues do you expect to find in the essay?

• Look through the entire essay. Are there sections with subtitles? If so, consider them in the same way that you considered the title of the essay as a whole. Jot down some ideas about how the different parts of the essay might contribute to the overall ideas in the essay.

• Read just the first paragraph of the essay, and ask yourself what ideas and issues are introduced in the 1st paragraph. How do these compare with the ideas and issues you expected to find based on the title (and any subtitles)?

• Read through the 1st section of the essay (or until you come to a good stopping point). Look back over the notes & questions you've written while you were reading. If you haven't written anything, re-read this section, making a more conscious effort to write while you are reading. If you have written some notes and questions, read through them, and then write notes on your notes—what trends or patterns do you see developing in the piece that you're reading? Can you think of any of your own examples to help you understand the ideas in this essay? What aspects of the text remain confusing at this point? Write down more questions—these should be questions that you hope to answer as you read through the rest of the text.

• Continue reading through the text, dividing it into manageable sections and "checking" your progress at the end of each section. As you read further, you should be able to start answering some of the questions you posed earlier. Draw arrows in your notebook to show yourself the connections you're making between different parts of the text. Use different colors of ink if you want. Create notes that will wake you up and remind you of how much work you've already done!

• As soon as you have finished reading the essay, take some time to jot down your ideas and impressions of the essay immediately. What are the important ideas here? What questions does the author raise? How does the text answer those questions? What questions does the essay raise for you, and how might you address those questions? What parts of the essay are still confusing to you? Why are they confusing? What would you say to the author of this essay if she or he were to walk into the room right now?

• Compare the notes you wrote after reading the essay with the notes you wrote after reading just the title, and just the first paragraph. In what ways has the essay met your expectations? What has taken place in the essay that you didn't expect?

• What advice would you give to someone about to start reading this essay? Sometimes, explaining a reading to someone else makes you realize how well you understand what you read—or, it makes you realize what you still need to discover about that reading.