Using active reading techniques while reading enables critical thinking. By making the reader take notes and ask questions about what they’re reading they start to think about the passage in new ways. I chose three active reading from throughout the semester, with the more recent passage at the top of the page. Looking at the newest example and comparing it to the earliest passage I can see a big difference. The earlier page has a lot of circles and shorter notes, while the later page has longer notes and more lines connecting things to one another. I think this is because throughout the semester I have gotten better at identifying what is more important in the text and had other articles to draw connections between. For example, the top image was from a pair of articles “Does the Internet Make You Smarter” and “Does the Internet Make You Dumber”, which had opposing viewpoints. As I was reading it was helpful to point out where the articles differed. Also having marked up texts allowed for better group discussions in class, having places marked up with questions made it easy to contribute because I wasn’t skimming through the pages of articles in order to remember what I wanted to talk about.
