When I read a piece of writing, the first thing I find myself doing is scan over the text and marking up sections or words that I find difficult to interpret. In doing this, I am able to challenge myself to revive exposure to vocabulary I am not familiar with and it gives me some things to ponder before I really dig into the ‘meat’ of the text. Just as Gilroy says, it’s important to “Make your reading thinking-intensive from the very start.” After doing this, I have found that I find a lot of my initial questions being answered by the author as I through the text more thoroughly. As I read I tend to underline pieces in which I feel hold a lot of importance and in the event that I stumble upon something that I don’t necessarily agree with, I take a moment to write my oppositions or questions in the margins. Gilroy also mentions the importance of asking such questions, as they allow the reader to engage in a dialog with the reader. I’ve also found that in doing this with a piece of writing that I later intend to use in an essay, it’s the easiest to come back to the markings in the margins and see what ideas were flowing through my mind when I first read the text. I find these thoughts are always the best when preparing to build an outline for the paper. In English 110 I was required to post annotations and comment on them as homework the following is an early example of such, entitled Blog 4.
