On Reading Well
What is Critical Reading?
To begin, we need to understand what critical reading means. If we think of reading as no more than a mode of receiving information by decoding letters, then it may come to seem that other ways are faster, easier – that, ideally, computers could simply dump so many bytes of information into our brain whenever we wanted to know something new. Right now, reading is even more essential for the new technologies than it has been for literacy in the age of print, but the advent of even newer technologies and increased use of other media could make us wonder if reading print will always be so important. However, if we see that reading always involves an act of interpretation, then the benefits of reading and learning to read more critically become even more crucial.
Thinking of reading as interpretation allows us to see that reading involves an act of critical participation in a culture that must include other media. In addition to books, we “read” films, television, and other forms of new media. Without the experiences with print media, however, we might not see so clearly the benefits of a certain distance that accompanies critical thinking. Reading opens up cultural spaces for the reader, and reading provides a model for interpretation that may be extended to other cultural practices.
As an active engagement with a text, critical reading entails a constant effort to figure out what is really going on in a text, not just what a text says but how it says it. For James Crosswhite, Director of the Composition Program, critical reading “is a dialogue, an interaction that requires active questioning.” It can mean both reading with the grain, affirmatively, as a way to enter into a writer’s ideas in order to understand them; and it can also mean reading against the grain, reading with mental resistance. Since writers appeal to our beliefs, we often find ourselves trying to decide whether to believe what a writer says. How do we decide to agree or disagree when a writer is trying to persuade us? There is no foolproof method by which we can always know what to believe. But we can practice critical reading as a way of determining the degree to which our agreement has been earned.
Yes, agreement can be a matter of degree. We do not have to decide whether to agree totally or disagree totally. We often “reserve judgment” or keep an open mind, as if we can believe or disbelieve depending on how persuasive the writer’s reasons are. We can decide to agree with a writer only to the degree that the writer has given us adequate grounds. University of Chicago professor Wayne C. Booth has defined critical reading as “measuring the degree of our assent based on the adequacy of the case made.”
This means that we practice critical reading when we try to distinguish what parts of the writing are offered as conclusions and what parts are offered as support for those conclusions. What is the author trying to get us to believe? What means does the author use to lead us to that conclusion? How adequate are those means?