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 Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:05 am Post subject: Not Some Hitchcock Geese |
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Not Some Hitchcock Geese
Someone once said read for love. Read each word as if it’s grade school again and you’ve just received a note from your crush. Sometime later after grade school you realize all that deciphering of words was really critical reading. It was the deciding whether it was literal or figurative language, and attempting to find a deeper meaning: does he like me or does he like me, like me? So I expound on critical reading: what is it, why it is important, and how you do it, an essay.
What is critical reading? Critical implies something more than just reading, take the two words, critical: involving skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc., and reading: the act of understanding the written word, and together you get reading to assess truth or merit. It is the analyzation of a piece, and interpretation of it, both line by line and as a whole. As humans we critically read everything, most of the time subconsciously as we analyze a piece whether it is a newspaper article, or a treatise. For example as those lines about the anger in the changes in the speed limit on fourth are ingested from a letter to the editor a flock of geese fly by your window. They look like pleasant geese so you watch them, and study their path across the sky.
Assessing the meaning of a piece of writing is important because to fully understand a piece you must delve into every nuance of every word. By critically reading it helps determine the author’s purpose, their biases, and your understanding of tone and persuasive elements. As a writer it is important because it helps you grow and expand. By inspecting how a writer goes about their craft—what they do well, what they don’t, you can apply that to yourself and hone your skills. The more you do, the better you get. Practice does make perfect; (perfect as in conjecture to a personal best). Speaking of growth, I am part of a writing group called SPEW: Standard Propagation of Emerging Writers; we take poetry, short stories, and in-progress novels that we have written and critique them for each other in attempt to become better writers. Each word, each phrase, each sentence is taken apart, sifted through, and analyzed. I can definitely say that I have matured as a writer due to this. It is funny looking back on things I wrote before: oh that’s when I finally learned to put foreshadowing on the payroll, oh that’s when I learned commas are your friend, oh look I still have trouble with homophones. So in amidst SPEW and me, why are those pleasant geese important? Oh yes, they fly and you don’t. Or maybe something else more grounded, like foraging. So learn to forage. What a more practical application of knowledge, than to watch, study, learn, and finally, do.
So, now that we have a semblance of a definition and its importance, there is only one thing left, the how. How does one read critically? For this I’ll take a page out of my own doings. First, supplies: the text, a highlighter, pen of pretty color usually green or pink, and the dictionary-thesaurus. Now, into the breach men for the reading has begun. I give it a 'once-over', read the thing in its entirety, most often I make notations as I do so on things that catch my attention. The first read over is to get a feel for the piece. Like watching a flock of birds flying by, it catches the eye but you just don’t know if the birds will migrate off on you or not. Maybe you’ll jot down the occurrence in your diary-journal-planner. After reading it once, I read it again, though this time I do a more in-depth analyzation: scribbling more notes in the margins about ideas and concepts, highlighting phrases, circling words, phrases to look up, examining diction, tone and syntax use. Dissecting the consonance and assonance of the language used. Sometimes it takes more than once to conquer this. Oh look, the birds haven’t migrated off yet, and they still have my attention. Now, I’m cataloguing species, and color, and wingspan. Finally, I go over it one last time in its entirety. Did the writer do their job? Did they stick to their thesis or stray? How was their presentation? Was it believable? What was the tone and did it change? Did I agree or disagree? What did I like about it, what didn’t I? What impression did they leave me with? I make notes on all that, scrawling marks all over. The birds have migrated off now, but in my minds eyes they are white, winged creatures flying in V formation.
Critical reading is just like juggling geese, some people do it, some people do it subconsciously. Sometimes people get caught up in every little detail and forget to take in the flock formation as a whole. Remember: reading for love is the best reason of all. It makes the world a sunnier and happier place.
The End.
AUTHOR NOTES: I had to write this as a writing sample for my college english course. I hate writing formatted essays, I'm craptastic at them. But I had to write this one, so, I'm going to force it all on you. Anyone catched the blatent Firefly analogy, et al? ...
Don't shoot me for just using SPEW as an example, I wanted to be concise, and it worked out that way.
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See, Snoink, I did write it.  |
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