Effective Reading

Effective readers go about the process of "applying clear thinking and sound judgment to determine the accuracy of what you read and its usefulness for your educational purposes." Since surveys show that college course requires 80 pages of outside reading a week, you should learn to read critically. Other activities including lectures, discussions, writing and problem- solving assignments, laboratory, shop, and field work assignments are used to teach you the constructs, frameworks, relationships and outcomes , but if you struggle with reading you are operating with a handicap.

effective readers: ineffective readers:

determine meanings of unfamiliar words Skip over or ignore unfamiliar words

using context, word analysis and the

dictionary/thesaurus

as you read , the ideas the writer brings forth no connection is made between the

connect with one another and make sense ideas. Some details seem completely unconnected

you can see the direction the writer is headed. you can’t predict where the writer is going.

you have a purpose for reading the material. you can’t relate the reason for reading this material.

You can express the major ideas in the material to summarize the material you need to

in your own words (paraphrase) reread it and repeat the author’s words.

Connotation / Denotation

Words have two types of meanings: denotation and connotation. Denotation is the dictionary definition or meaning . The connotation is the feeling or impression that the word suggests to the reader. Sometimes when reading you have to read the way the writer put the words together and there overall context to understand the particular meaning the writer intended to convey to you. Two articles could be written in the newspaper by people for and against an issue and their connotations would be totally different. In other words, there is more than one way of looking at things , issues , problems and the words the writer chooses are often a give-away to the way he feels or the response he may be trying to elicit from you. Ask yourself when you’re reading what is the author trying to make me feel or think in this piece?

Connotation can be either positive, negative or neutral depending on how it is used. An example would be a lemon. If we were thinking of a lemon for making lemonade, there would be a positive connotation. On the other hand, if we were talking about the bucket of bolts that we just were taken on at the used car dealer’s, it would have a negative connotation. The author chooses certain words in his writing that will make you think or feel positively or negatively about the point he is trying to make. A lot of times writers try to get you emotionally involved or respond to their ideas or subtle ways of presenting information. Words that are designed to suggest a certain idea or make you feel a certain emotion are usually carefully chosen by cleaver word-crafters . Careful readers can identify and understand these techniques of writing and influencing people. Usually these connotative words aren’t explained to the reader . Usually it is understood that the background knowledge most people have from growing up and living in our culture will help them "fill in the blanks" and figure out what the author means in a text.

Read the following passage below paying careful attention to the connotations used to convey certain meanings from certain carefully chosen words:

Living in a land so transformed by the burdens we brought, we find it almost incredible that North America was not long ago a unscared place of overpowering beauty and fecundity¹ , where the hand of humankind was dark, aboriginal, and mythically bound, so that it brushed but lightly its environment Traveling the cancerous strech of the eastern seaboard, from the English outposts in Massachusetts, down through the outer banks of North Carolina, and on into the island of flowers, Florida, where Soto and Navaraez trudged off on their nightmare errands, we have some trouble imagining either beauty or fecundity. The old chronicles that tell of these seem travelers’ tales to us now, though we have no doubt that we are in the presence of tremendous industry and power. Nothing less could have changed this landscape so totally from what it once was that even with our narrative we are lost to find vestiges of the old world.

Fredrick Turner, Beyond Geography

In the piece, the author talks about the transformation of North America from an "frightened place of overpowering beauty and fecundity", which means a place of beauty and abundance, to "the cancerous stretch of the eastern seaboard" created by the Europeans The author used the underlined words in the passage to give the reader the impression that the Europeans ruined what the Indians preserved. Why did he choose the words that are underlined? Use the thesaurus to look up any you don’t know and substitute words in the place of the underlined ones that show the Europeans in a more favorable light. Was it that hard to change the meaning or tell the reader a different thing by changing a few words? Discuss how this could be used by writers to sway opinions or slant the truth.