Critical Reading
What
is Close and Critical Reading?
Close and critical reading is the ability to comprehend
information, analyze how it is presented, determine the
purpose and perspective of the author, establish what it
means, and apply it to your life.
- Dr. Elaine Weber
The following four questions are used to move students from
comprehending the information to the final application to
their own lives. These four steps or modes of analysis are
reflected in four types of reading and discussion:
What a text says
– restatement
What a text does – description
What a text means – interpretation
So what does it mean to me – application
You can distinguish each mode of analysis by the subject
matter of the discussion:
- What a text says – restatement – talks about the same topic as the original (summary or restatement)
- What a text does – description – discusses aspects of the presentation of the text (choices of content, language, and structure)
- What a text means – interpretation — analyzes the text and asserts a meaning for the text as a whole (putting the message in a larger context and determine theme)
- So what does it mean to me – application of the text to my life (finding the relevance of the bigger meaning/theme to my life)
The Tools of Critical Reading: analysis and inference
What to look for (analysis) - involves recognizing those aspects of a discussion that control the meaning
How to think about what you find (inference) - involves the processes of inference, the interpretation of data from within the text.
The
above material is based upon or directly from the work of
Dan Kurland at http://www.criticalreading.com/