2.0 A Review of Close Reading

Generally, people use three styles of reading to monitor tremendous amounts of visual information every day. That we read words in more than one way is not surprising. You are unlikely to concentrate on a street sign for five minutes while driving, and likely you skim or scan text in phone books or Internet search results. Choosing an inappropriate reading style may result in unsafe situations, such as texting while driving, because our attention is diverted from our primary activity, driving.

While reading longer text for pleasure or entertainment, most readers are passive in their reading habits, focusing only on the story-line. However, if a text is engaging , readers think about new ideas and possibilities, and they interact actively with the text.

Reading to learn new ideas is more challenging, requiring the reader to interact with text more deliberately. An effective strategy to help one examine ideas in texts is called close reading .