Over the weeks in this course, my approach to critically reading an article have greatly changed. Through the first few pieces of reading, I was merely just going through to get it done. After spending time in the class, I realized I needed to start a “conversation” with the paper the second I started reading it. This caused me to annotate more and ask more questions while reading. Typically while I annotate a paper, I will write any questions that come to my head in the margin, as I did while reading Gilroy’s paper. Another thing I will typically do while reading an assigned article is highlight or underline key points or points that I think will be helpful in the upcoming paper. This is something I utilized often in the articles I read this semester, especially the article by Julie Beck. That way it is easy for me to go back and pull the quotes I want instead of wasting time searching for them. Other things I do are circle words I do not know and write down if I agree or disagree with a certain claim the author is trying to make. The following questions that were done for Beck helped me learn the material and understand it better than I had before. This gave my paper a good chance of being well written. Those questions also get me thinking about certain things that I might have missed while reading the article, or other important points than what I found. Overall, critically reading these articles and annotating them throughout the semester has improved my writing skills.
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