Dan Kurland's    www.criticalreading.com
Reading and Writing Ideas As Well As Words
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How the Language Really Works:
The Fundamentals of Critical Reading and Effective Writing

Reading / Writing
Critical Reading
Inference
Choices
Ways to Read
Grammar
Learning
to Read
and Write
Critical Reading
and
Critical Thinking
Reading Ideas
as Well as
Words
The
Ingredients
of Texts
What a Text
Says, Does,
and Means
A Grammar
for Reading
and Writing

"Never accept things as they're portrayed."
Anthony Shadid, journalist, 1968-2012

To non-critical readers, many texts offer the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
To the critical reader, any single text provides but one portrayal of the facts, one individual's "take" on the subject.


Non-critical (or pre-critical) reading is concerned with recognizing what a text says about the topic. The goal is to make sense of the presentation as a sequence of thoughts, to understand the information, ideas, and opinions stated within the text from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph. This is a linear activity.

Critical reading is an analytic activity. The reader rereads a text to identify patterns of elements -- information, values, assumptions, and language usage-- throughout the discussion. These elements are tied together in an interpretation, an assertion of an underlying meaning of the text as a whole.

Critical thinking involves bringing outside knowledge and values to bear to evaluate the presentation and decide what to ultimately accept as true.


criticalreading.com shows you how to recognize what a text says, what a text does, and what a text means
by analyzing choices of content, language, and structure. It shows you what to look for, and how to think about what you find.



Alternative Indexes to the Site
Critical Reading: The Steps
Principles of Critical Reading
Example: Portraying Charles Drew

    Fiction
Writing - with Links to Discussion of Reading
The Origins of this Approach
Published Text:
I Know What It Says...What Does It Mean?
About the Author

Everyone complains that students cannot read well…
and yet most high schools and colleges offer no course in critical reading.
This is the website for just such a course.

Copyright © 2002, 2010 by Daniel J. Kurland.  All rights reserved.
This Web page may be linked to other Web pages. Please inform the author


Dan Kurland's    www.criticalreading.com


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