Strategic Reading with the Writing Center

This was an academic enrichment workshop, but I’m hoping that it will count as a Personal Enrichment one for me because it’s my second in the category. I took place on October 20th (2009 obviously) in VC 3-190 from 1 to 2 PM. At first, I thought that it would be boring, but it turned out to be rather enlightening. The subject was Strategic Reading and it definitely highlighted points to think about when reading something rather than just read it head-on. The second question one must ask him or herself before reading something is why they are reading it (that is, “I will read this text in order to…”) — the purpose. The first is “What am I reading.” The what, where, and when of the text perhaps. Together these two, the subject of the reading and the reader’s prupose make the “How” of reading it or, put otherwise, determine how one reads the text. However, the workshop taught much more than this. One must also consider who the authors of the piece are and their purpose in writing it. Are they writing it purely factually or perhaps to persuade. Also what is the intended readership of the text — what kind of audience that they are trying to reach. It was a comfortable setting with only four students present and we were each given a different article to read and answer questions based on it. Then we discussed it. The professor also brought up different things to look at to get a sense of the piece without actually having to read the piece itself — namely, the Title, author (as mentioned), abstract, introduction, short biographical information, summary on the back (if present), etc. This was also, like most of my other workshops, outside of my comfort zone, but I would nonetheless recommend it to others because it was relatively short, but very educating and thought-provoking.