When I first started doing active reading I wasn’t too good at it. I don’t think anyone is when they are trying something new. But throughout this semester with this class I have really learned how to active reading. It got me to re-read more and more of the work I read so I better understand it. It really got me to evaluate everything and made it better for me to learn. Same with critical reading, I was not good or didn’t even know what it really was till this semester. I never did it in highschool. But with learning and doing critical reading this semester, I got very good at analysing which made it a lot easier to understand material this year. 

In Susan Gilory’s statement she says “Mark up the margins of your text with words and phrases: ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes…. Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions: “What does this mean?” “Why is the writer drawing that conclusion?” “Why am I being asked to read this text?” etc….They are reminders of the unfinished business you still have with a text …”. I really related to this because this is what I did to help me through out the semster to help me with my papers and everything. These tips really helped me and improved my writing skills.