Active reading strategies are the mental processes that require a reader to read critically by focusing on the material to understand and actively engage with the material by being aware of one’s own thought process when reading.

It involves: asking questions, reflecting, interpreting meaning, making connections. 

Before Reading

• Preview/Scanning

Scan the text to identify and understand its components prior to reading. Here you can get an overview of the work and make some predictions about its content. Components to make note of include: titles & headings, graphs/tables/figures/illustrations, authors and abstract. 

While Reading

• Annotating

Annotating is when you mark the important points and take notes throughout the text. This allows the reader to stay engaged with the content of the reading. To do this - you may want to print out your readings or use a digital annotating software. 

• Reading On

Try to skip over unknown words or concepts and use the context clues within the text to define and understand the term. 

• Chunking

Breaking the text into smaller chucks may help you comprehend and retain the information more easily. 

• Visualizing

Try using visuals to understand and organize the ideas within the text. Some examples of this may be to create a 'mind map' while reading by showing how the text's primary concepts link together, or draw a narrative arc of the text's arguments. 

After Reading

• Paraphrasing/Summarizing

Restating and rewriting the text in your own words to capture the main focus of the reading will ensure you pay close attention to the author's ideas and helps improve your level of understanding. 

• Re-reading

Don't hesitate to re-read texts again for deeper understanding. 

• Inferring and Metacognition

Readers make inferences when you use clues from the text and your own experience to form a conclusion or create new meaning that is not stated in the reading. 

• Questioning

Ask questions about the text that may surround the author's intentions and/or methods. 

Here are some initial questions you can consider as you engage a text:

• Who is the author?
  • Are they a credible expert in this area?
  • What is the author’s field or area of specialization?
• How does this relate to the claims made in the written work you have just read?
• In what context has this been written and published (i.e., is it published in a scholarly journal, is it a book chapter, has it been written in response to a particular theme etc.)?
• What is the thesis, and what claims are made to support that thesis?
  • Are the thesis and claims specific or general?
• Is the thesis based on, and supported by evidence and/or sound argumentation?
  • Is the support varied?
  • Is the support contextually appropriate?
  • Is the support convincing?
• How does the author attempt to support their claim?
• What kind of persuasive language does the author use?
• Would you come to a similar conclusion as the author?
• Can you see the conclusion as (at least) valid and well-supported?
  • Why or why not?

Analysis Asks: What are the patterns of the text?

Analysis means looking at the parts of something to detect patterns. In looking at these patterns, your critical thinking skills will be engaged in analyzing the argument the author is making:

• What is the thesis or overall theory?
• What are the supporting points that create the argument? How do they relate to each other? How do they relate to the thesis?
• What are the examples used as evidence for the supporting points? How do they relate to the points they support? To each other? To the thesis?
• What techniques of persuasion are used (appeals to emotion, reason, authority, etc.)?
• What rhetorical strategies are used (e.g. definition, explanation, description, narration, elaboration, argumentation, evaluation)?
• What modes of analysis are used (illustration, comparison/contrast, cause and effect, process analysis, classification/division, definition)?

Interpretation Asks: What do the patterns of the argument mean?

 Interpretation is reading ideas as well as sentences. We need to be aware of the cultural and historical context, the context of its author’s life, the context of debates within the discipline at that time and the intellectual context of debates within the discipline today.

• What debates were the author and the text engaging with at that time?
• What kinds of reasoning (historical, psychological, political, philosophical, scientific, etc) are employed?
• What methodology is employed and what theory is developed?
• How might my reading of the text be biased? Am I imposing 21st century ideas or values on the text? If so, is this problematic?

Evaluation Asks: How well does the text do what it does? What is its value?

 Evaluation is making judgments about the intellectual/cognitive, aesthetic, moral or practical value of a text.

When we are considering its intellectual/cognitive value we ask questions such as these:

• How does it contribute to the discipline? Are its main conclusions original?
• Does the evidence and reasoning adequately support the theory/theories presented?
• Are the sources reliable?
• Is the argument logically consistent? Convincing?
• Are any experiments, questionnaires, statistical sections, etc designed and executed in accordance with the accepted standards of the relevant discipline? 
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the theory?  
• How would competing theories criticize this text? How could the author reply?
• Overall, is the theory/approach in this text better than competing theories/approaches? In other words, what are its comparative strengths and weaknesses? In reading critically we need to keep competing theories in mind.

This method will help you read effectively to understand and retain the material.