Introduction
Reading
Reading critically will be a major factor in your success. You will be reading not only to understand content, but also to understand the writer’s craft. Assigned texts come from a variety of historical periods and serve a wide range of purposes and audiences. Your assigned reading will come from historical documents, professional and technical journals, personal narratives, news reports, Op/Ed columns, literary criticism, speeches, and many other sources. Many of your texts will be visual, and a portion of this course is about learning to “read” visual text. Reading skills you will be expected to demonstrate include:
- Getting facts straight
- Identifying an author’s thesis, whether stated or implied
- Identifying stated and unstated assumptions
- Analyzing an author’s argument (and realizing that argument is about much more than winning or losing; it is much more than debate)
- Examining an author’s reasoning and evidence
- Identifying the basic features of style
- Identifying structure and patterns of development
- Exploring your personal response and those aspects of the text that evoke that response
- Evaluating a text overall and determining its significance
- Exploring the connections you find between and among texts
