9 Reflecting
Learning Outcomes
- Identify strategies for reflecting on a text and the reading process.
- Apply reflection strategies to the reading process.
Why Reflect?
In any situation, reflection allows you to process and make sense of an experience. When reading, reflection does this in two ways. First, it enables you to further consider the information from the text. Second, reflection allows you to assess your reading process.
You may have finished reading an article once, but the reading process does not end there. Evaluating your reading process will help you make adjustments when you encounter more challenging texts. Reflection allows for further processing of the content and and further refinement of your reading process.
How Do You Reflect?
The questions below can be used to guide your reflection on the reading and the process of previewing and interacting with the text.
Questions for Reflection
Use the following questions to guide your reflection.
- Which predictions were accurate, and which did you have to revise?
- Were you able to answer your questions?
- Is the article primarily narrative, expository, or argumentative?
- What is your understanding of the main idea and the purpose of the article?
- What questions do you have about the article?
- Which aspects of previewing and reading interactively helped you to understand the article?
- Where did you struggle to understand something in the reading, and what did you do to work through it?
- What changes could you have made to your reading process to improve your engagement and understanding?
Use the practice exercise below to experiment with reflecting.
Practice: Reflect on a Text and Your Reading Process
Revisit the article you previewed and read interactively for the practice exercises in the previous two chapters. Now, practice applying the guidelines for reflecting using that same article with your notes from previewing and reading interactively.
Looking ahead to Summarizing
Now that you have practiced applying the reading process, you are ready to move on to summarizing. Going forward, always use the reading process before summarizing any article. The reading process will lay the foundation for summarization and, eventually, response.