Reading Critically

1. Find some hints and make inferences from title because it can help show what the piece will be about. It can tell you the subject.

2. Next, you need to use whatever background information you have on the author to help you guess what the essay will be about. Sometimes there will be notes before to help with this step.

3. Knowing where the work was published can tell you what audience it is directed at.

4.Also, you should know the year it was published, so can guess what kind of information the paper could contain.

5. When you begin reading, read it all, but don't ponder over every single word. Circle it and move on, and that means you should read with a pencil in hand.

6. Now that you've read, you should summarize. It helps you understand what is going on in your won words. First, write a summary sentence for each paragraph, and then summarize each of those sentences.

7. Now is the time for critical thinking where can organize your thoughts with analysis, inference, synthesis, and evaluation.

8. Analysis is consciously looking at the main idea and other elements, and compare it with something else.

9. Inference is drawing conclusions from the work, and assumptions are opinions or beliefs that you think display the writers thoughts. 

10. During synthesis, you try to elements of a whole. Ask what this essay has to do with your own life.

11. Next, you evaluate the work form judgment and a point of view.

12. then we look at the purpose to see maybe why the writer wrote this. All these previous steps will help the purpose come to life.

13. Ask, how does the writer succeed?

14. look of unity and coherence.

15. When stepping deeper into understanding the language notice the tone,  think about connotations of words, and figures of speech.