Reading Process

Janell RedmondEnglish 1301Sharon Prince22 February 2013
Implementing Effective Reading Strategies
Being an avid reader, I cannot miss any available opportunity to read. Thus, setting personal targets in reading has always been a top priority, and in most cases I accomplish this. The urge to develop reading skills facilitates easier comprehension throughout the reading process. One of the strategies that enhance reading is the use of highlights and underlines (Kirszner & Mandell 15). This strategy facilitates future referencing to the text, essay and other written materials. In addition, it helps to lay emphasis on the main points and makes it easy to review written material. However, the extensive use of highlighting has inadvertently led to overlooking other strategies including brackets, asterisks, sticker notes, marginal notes among others. There is also a need to improve on use of annotations because some of the approaches are applicable to specific subjects such as biology or history books and not in others such as the essays. Thus, a review of the essay “when is it rape?” by Nancy Gibbs sought to improve on my reading strategies including use of sticky notes, marginal notes underlining, brackets and asterisks. Reading the essay and other written works was essential as this facilitated class discussions and helped to improve on annotation.
So as to do this, it was necessary to make an overview analysis of the essay “when is it rape?” Whereby the author looks into instances where rape would be considered a criminal offense. There are occasions where the judges and public are not in agreement on what manner of sexual contact is rape or forced sex between friends. Before the actual reading of the text it was vital to choose the strategies most appropriate among them being underlining, highlighting, use of sticky note, marginal notes and the overview of the text. Consequently, it is necessary to look into these strategies and their effect on reading.
The purpose of this assignment influenced my reading assignments in various ways. The overview strategy is vital as it facilitated comprehension of the essay’s overall message. Furthermore, an overview of the author’s background also played an important role in giving an insight of the author’s interests and agenda of writing the essay. Overall the overview of the essay also facilitated understanding the purpose of reading the article and decision on the most appropriate writing strategy to use
In reading the essay, it was vital to use various effective reading strategies among them the use of bracket and underlining sentences that made significant viewpoints with regards to situations when sexual intercourse become rape. According to Gibbs (336) “sometimes a man goes too far on a date without the woman’s consent. But this infraction, they say, is not as ghastly a crime as street rape, and should not be taken ...