Academic Reading

As a college student, reading for academic purposes is how you will spend most of your time outside of class. Some semesters you may have 100 pages per week or more that you will need to read efficiently and effectively to do well in your tests and final exams. Consequently, “reading smart” is imperative for your success as a college student in any American university.

Academic reading is not simply looking at facts arranged into sentences and paragraphs. It is not a process of simply retrieving information. Academic reading is an active process in which students create a kind of dialogue with the text and its author. In doing so, academic reading involves understanding the author’s ideas, and how those ideas connect both within the text and in broader contexts.

Critical Reading Skills

One main skill that successful college students develop is critical reading.

Critical reading does not mean being critical of or negative toward the reading that you do. It does not simply involve finding points of disagreement with the text and arguing against it (though this is possible, but just one option among many). Rather, it involves asking important questions to achieve comprehension.

Questions to Ask While Reading

There are some crucial questions that you bring with you from the start of your reading and throughout to the end. These questions include:

1. Who is the writer? To whom is s/he speaking? What gives the author authority to say what they do? In other words, what are their credentials? What is the bias of the author? What is the purpose of the author? What does the author want the reader to do after reading?
2. What source is the text found in? What do you know about this source?
3. What is the topic of this reading (or this section of reading)? What is the reading about?
4. What does the author say about the topic? In other words, what is the main idea (or primary message) of this reading? The main idea (MI) is the point that the author is trying to make about the topic. It is the opinion or the belief about the topic. Sometimes the MI is referred to as the premise of the author or the claim(s) of the author. Another way to think about this is, what question is/questions are being answered by what you are reading?
5. What details and examples (evidence) are used to support the claim(s) of the author? Here you must also decide, what is the most convincing evidence? Is any of the evidence less convincing?
6. Who might agree/disagree with the ideas presented in the text?
7. Look at the organization of the text as a whole. Do you understand why each paragraph follows the one before it? Do you see the connections from one idea to the next? Are there places where the connection is confusing or not clear to you?

Rationale for Active Reading