Advice on improving critical reading skills?

Hello everyone! I am a high school student and out of the three sections on the SATs, I always find the critical reading to be most difficult. Seeing as this is a forum devoted to teaching, I figured it would be best to post this here. Does anyone have any tips, suggestions, or personal anecdotes they can share regarding improving one's ability to read critically?

My teachers in school have told me that the best way to improve critical reading is by, well, reading, but I didn't find that all too insightful. Perhaps one of the many English scholars here can help me. Thank you very much in advance! ;]

"Critical reading" means you read with a purpose - you read as if you're looking for something and you read paying attention to the natural questions that good literature creates.

A few ideas: as you read, be clear that nothing that happens in a book - especially fiction - had to be there, had to happen in the way it happened, in the place it happend. All stories, all essays are constructed via a series of choices a writer makes. A critical reader will be asking questions in her head as she reads:

1. Why did the writer make this choice (and not some other choice)?
2. Why did the character do that and not this?
3. Why did this incident happen in this particular location and at this point in the story?
4. This word/phrase/sentence/paragraph/scene/chapter seems out of place - why? What is being emphasized here? Things that seem abnormal are the writer's way of throwing you a "speedbump" - slow down and see what s/he might be trying to point your attention towards.
5. What are you not being told/shown? Why might the author be concealing this information from you?

That's just a start - but critical reading means that you don't take anything for granted - every word was chosen by the writer; every scene, character and action committed was chosen by the writer to do something in the piece; a critical reader asks why those choices were made and what they contribute to the story.

Good luck.

I agree with Red, but I'll add some stuff as well (since it wasn't so long ago that I was in your position myself).

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Originally Posted by Ashalin

Does anyone have any tips, suggestions, or personal anecdotes they can share regarding improving one's ability to read critically?

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Read Melville! When we did "Bartleby" and Benito Cereno in my American Lit class it was pretty revelatory. Since then, I've regarded the question of a narrator's reliability (even in the third person) as a central component of critical interpretation. Certainly reliable narration is not uncommon - I do not mean to suggest calling into question every sentence you read and doubting constantly everything you read - but this mode of reading leads one to consider more carefully things like word-choice. Melville is great for this (these two are all I'm very familiar with at the moment, so that's all I'll recommend) because he doesn't beat you over the head with this unreliability; even to the very end the stories could presumably hold together as told, but the reader is left feeling a bit unsettled, which disposes one ideally towards rereading. I would regard this as an exercise in careful reading, however, more than a model for how to approach any text. It sort of solidified for me the (comparatively abstract) idea of critical reading - much like Red is talking about with how any word or phrase, if the writer is worth his salt, has a reason for being there in place of any other. More than anything, though, I think it requires one to consider the deeper meanings of words. It is, for the most part, best to confine one's analysis of a work to the text itself (with a few obvious exceptions sometimes with regard to a work's setting, popular contemporary ideas it might have been responding to, etc...), so all you really have at your disposal to base your interpretation on is the words, which authors have a reputation for jacking around with. Sometimes this is a matter of picking up on something that is slightly hidden, but often it's just a matter of considering why a given arrangement of words and phrases produces a certain effect better than some other arrangement - or, even simpler, the fact that it produces that effect at all. If I had a book on hand, from which I could choose something from my underlines and notes, I could explain this a bit better - I know this is all unforgivably abstract still - but this will have to do for the present.

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My teachers in school have told me that the best way to improve critical reading is by, well, reading, but I didn't find that all too insightful.

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Perhaps "re-reading" would be nearer the point. If you don't "get it" in one story, you'll only continue to not "get it" in an infinite number of others until you start looking more carefully. This means, essentially, deciding what certain aspects of a text contribute to its overall effect and meaning - a matter you will be much more prepared to concern yourself with having read it at least once already. Obviously you cannot, in an academic setting, always do this - I am not very familiar with the SAT, but if it is anything like the ACT that I took, one is severely pressed for time, and could not by the most thorough perversion of probability hope to read the texts more than once (though of course one should revisit lines here and there that seem important), so I would suggest cultivating this habit on your own of analysis - line-by-line if need be - after reading a text once or twice through in its entirety. (I am of course referring here to shorter works; longer prose forms complicate things a little, though maybe less than one might think.) Once you've practiced this more exhaustive method, you'll be much more prepared to tackle on one reading the stuff you face on these standard assessments - the truth is, you'll be relatively prepared for the sort of stuff one might encounter on the Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, which are even tougher than the standard tests. You'll have additionally cultivated the habit (if you haven't already) of underlining, which was perfectly acceptable on my test.
That's my suggestion, because it's what worked for me. (If you need, like, my credentials, I scored perfect on both of the English components of my assessment, and nearly so on both of the English A.P. tests, so I know it works.) I'm sure you lack the time to go diving into classic literature with such rigor (unless you plan to go to college to study literature), but I would suggest a couple of other titles that might help as well, supposing you've not already encountered them: most of Hemingway's more well-known short stories would probably work, particularly "Hills Like White Elephants", Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" and "Young Goodman Brown", both reeking of symbolism, and - though I know he's commonly associated with angsty juveniles - Poe's more intense sketches ("Tell-Tale Heart", perhaps "The Black Cat", etc.) would give you something worth looking at.) What I'm suggesting is, of course, total overkill. Nothing you encounter on that kind of test will be as...let us say "challenging"...as these works, so only going through this process with one or two works would probably arm you sufficiently. I only suggest all this stuff because I, in all my profound nerdiness, find great enjoyment in it...

Incidentally, welcome to the Forum, Ashalin. :thumbs_up
Good luck. You're welcome to PM me or whatever if you have a question at some point.

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Originally Posted by Ashalin

Hello everyone! I am a high school student and out of the three sections on the SATs, I always find the critical reading to be most difficult. Seeing as this is a forum devoted to teaching, I figured it would be best to post this here. Does anyone have any tips, suggestions, or personal anecdotes they can share regarding improving one's ability to read critically?

My teachers in school have told me that the best way to improve critical reading is by, well, reading, but I didn't find that all too insightful. Perhaps one of the many English scholars here can help me. Thank you very much in advance! ;]

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Well, yes, it does improve with reading. But it must be active reading - you must ask questions as already Redzeppelin said. Critical reading means you don't read the book just to know "what's going on", but also to know what it tries to say to the reader, what effects it has on the reader - and how the writer achieves it. It may seem complicated, but don't worry, it's not.

All you have to do is read the book and think about what you read. Maybe in the begining you'll have to read the book more than once - because the first time you'll be too concentrated on "what's going on". So read it again and this time consider different aspects of the book, that you neglected during the first reading - like setting, mood, names of characters, phrases and sentences that sound familiar (if it sounds familiar but you're unsure why, google it :) )...

And don't worry, you won't have to read all books several times for the rest of your life. After you've read certain number of books - after you became "experienced reader", it'll become automatic and you'll be able to do it all during the first reading. :)

There are also few books that might help you, like
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Ways of Reading by M. Montgomery
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler

There are probably many more, but these are books that helped me very much. I'd start with Foster, it's practical, and also written in interesting, conversational style, easy to understand.

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Originally Posted by Aiculík

And don't worry, you won't have to read all books several times for the rest of your life. After you've read certain number of books - after you became "experienced reader", it'll become automatic and you'll be able to do it all during the first reading. :)

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:thumbs_up I meant to mention that; my bad.

Pity you can't take good advice when it's given. Critical reading improves with ... reading ... thoughtfully.

It is just the process of evaluating the book and the writing.

Ask WHY ... was this written in this way.

Ask WHAT ... is this trying to tell me.

Compare it with other books you have read ... is this better or worse? Does it make you think more? or less? Is it 'good'.

Actually it is just using the object between your ears whilst reading.

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Originally Posted by juliefrancis

There are number of tools and methods in reading online by which you can improve reading skills.
You should try to convert the written information into pictorial format while reading for effective comprehension of contents.

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Absolutely NOT! Do not go backwards, making pictures, reading aloud etc slows your reading down and makes it harder to absorb not better.

You can however do things like write a summary of what you have read.

Draw a mind map (if you like that sort of thing) of the key points in the book

Explain the book to some else, even if you just do it in a notebook for yourself

Read different kinds of books in all different genres.

Keep a book journal. Not just a list of what you have read, but critique the books - what was good, what was bad. what you liked, what you didn't like.

Again it's about asking questions about what you are reading. What is the author trying to say? Did they succeed in getting the point across? Did they describe the scene well? Did the book convey emotion? Can you identify with what the character is going through? Why or why not? Was the book well-written? Did it preach? Was it shallow? Were the descriptions good? Language, prose, flow?