As a reader, it is important to challenge yourself when reading a text. It is not just about completing the reading and moving on, it is significant to focus on what you can gain and learn from the reading. It is also critical to understand what you will be reading before going into the text. Having a good understanding of your author and skimming over what the text will be about could be helpful with how you engage yourself.

It can be helpful to read over a text more than once. Reading content more than once can aid in gaining a deeper understanding and not just reading for the “gist”. It is useful to annotate and create summaries as reading, to keep yourself focused on the reading and have remembrance of what you have read.

While reading, it is beneficial to be critical of the author’s point that they are trying to get across. Distinguishing wether the author is stating a fact, belief or opinion will be valuable when retaining your own sense of information from the reading. It is critical to know the difference between these three, a fact can be supported by evidence whereas an opinion or belief would be stated with assumptions.

It is essential to try to understand the purpose of the author’s text. Reading any writing and perceiving it as an argument will challenge you to obtain your own perspective on the reading, and not just adopting the author’s point of view. An author’s word choice, or diction, and style of writing can influence how readers view the text. You can predict the intentions of the author by paying attention to hints in the writing that may address their aim. In any form of writing, it is important to pull apart the writing to acquire your own opinions and understanding of the text.