CORNELLNOTES

TOPIC: Critical Reading Skills (Part 1)

Key Points NOTES

What Is Critical Critical reading is reading that involves processes
that enhance comprehension and clarification of
Reading?
the text.

Critical reading is necessary to keep the reader

from misunderstanding the text and for the
reader to derive knowledge from it.

Critical reading skills help the reader make sense

of the text.

Examples of critical reading skills are previewing,

activating prior knowledge, making predictions,
and synthesizing.

Previewing Previewing means getting an idea of what the text is

about. One way to do this is to scan the first
sentence of each paragraph For previewing a book,
you can look at the table of contents in the summary
at the back of the book.

Activating Prior Activating prior knowledge means actively recalling

what you know about the topic of the text. For
Knowledge example, when the text is about the Philippine
National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, you can recall what you
know about him. This will help you understand the
text better.

Making Making predictions means trying to guess what

happens next based on what you have read. This is
Predictions usually done when reading narrative writing.
CORNELLNOTES
TOPIC: Critical Reading Skills (Part 1)

Key Points NOTES

Visualizing Visualizing means constructing a mental picture of
what you are reading. You try to imagine what the
author saw, felt tasted, touched, or experienced
based on the vivid descriptive words written in the
text.

Understanding The understanding sequence of events means

knowing which events come after another. This is
Sequence Of particularly important if the author does not present
Events the events in a chronological way. You can get clues
about the sequence of events by paying attention to
transition words such as then before that or later.

Identifying Main Identifying main ideas and details means knowing

which ideas support bigger ideas. The main ideas are
Ideas And Details general and relatively broad In scope. Details are
ideas that strengthen those general ideas. Examples
of details are statistics, anecdotes, or illustrations.

SUMMARY

Critical reading is crucial since it improves anyone's ability to

comprehend lectures or other written material. This lesson
teaches us the value of critical reading and how it can help us
grasp the context or concept of the text we are reading. Critical
reading can help you think more clearly and critically when you are
reading a book. Reading that incorporates techniques to improve
text comprehension and clarity is referred to as critical reading. It
has six components that work together to make it easier for you to
comprehend what you are reading and to think more clearly about
it.