Outcome III (Active Reading) – Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking. This learning outcome focuses on active reading and a range of informal writing activities that develop understanding and enable us to engage meaningfully with what we read.

For this English 110 class I read an essay by Anthony Kwame Appiah titled “Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice”. As I was reading this, I made annotations when I had questions, made connections, and had a moment where I felt that I really understood the text. After making these annotations, I explained why I thought that the highlighted section was relevant, allowing me to practice and grow my skills for reading and analyzing important texts, which can greatly help me in other classes. Understanding is shown in red, questioning is shown in blue, relating is shown in green, and challenging is shown in orange.

Understanding – Where are you annotating to understand the reading? Where are your reading responses working to aid understanding? Be specific.

In paragraph 2, Appiah says, “Now, if I walk down New York’s Fifth Avenue on an ordinary day, I will have within sight more human beings than most of those prehistoric hunter-gatherers saw in a lifetime.” In our society, the development of human population is greater today than it has ever been. However, we would not have been able to have all the advancement today without the help of our hunter-gatherers.

Questioning – Where are you annotating to ask questions or figure out things in the text? How did you sort that out over the project? Be specific.

In paragraph 12, Appiah says, “In the wake of 9/11, there has been a lot of fretful discussion about the divide between “us” and “them.”” I believe that people are not considered bad people due to their race and ethnicity, but a bad because of their actions. Yes, what happened on 9/11 was devastating, but why do we choose to brand all Arabs into terrorist. Is it because we are scared?

Relating – Where are you making connections between the texts, or between the texts and your essay? Include annotations where we see that.

In paragraph 22, Appiah says, “And when it comes to change, what moves people is often not an argument from a principle, not a long discussion about values, but just a gradually acquired new way of seeing things.” This one quote relates to all the readings we have done this semester in English. Our main goal was to understand how storytelling can be a product of change. When listening to stories of others, we began to emphasize and see their point of view from a different perspective.

Challenging or Extending – Where are you challenging ideas in the texts? Where are you extending an author’s idea or ideas? Show this in annotations, in homework responses, or in other evidence of your active reading work.

In paragraph 31, Appiah says, “A man and a woman go out on a date. Our habit is that, even if the woman offers, the man pays. A man and a woman approach an elevator door. The man steps back. A man and a woman kiss in a movie theater. No one takes a second look.” Why do we stereotype a man’s job into being the “grunt” work of the relationship. Why can’t women also pay for the bill occasionally and hold the door?