My approach to active and critical reading is typically to summarize paragraphs, sentences, and sections in my own words and asking questions of the text as they come up. I feel that in order to rephrase a section it forces you to think about what it means and if you are confused then you can ask your questions further engaging with the text. Gilroy goes further with this and had a deeper “dialogue” with the text where you not only annotate what you have to say about the text or what questions you have but what the text has to say to you. She also encourages you to break the text down and put it back together again in order to see the outline for their argument. The last piece of advice she gives is to analyze where you are in your class and what your other readings have been about in order to find potentially hidden meaning behind why you are being told to read this text in particular. You can see my critical reading strategies at work on the image on the page below. You can see me question a single phrase where Strawson describes a form of ambition as unfavorable but does not elaborate on what that looks like. Most of my annotations on the rest of this page are me adding personal comments, some of which may seem pointless but even though it may not be a deep analysis of the text or a particularly relevant opinion it is still engaging with the text I am putting my feelings onto the page so I am forced to note my own feelings on the text. This promotes the close reading of the text which assists with critical thought.
