Author: Richard Paul and Linda Elder Publisher: Foundation for Critical Thinking Copyright: 2008 Pages: 60 Dimensions: 51/4" x 8" ISBN (10Digit): 0-944583-21-0 ISBN (13Digit): 978-0-944583-21-0
This guide provides theory and activities necessary for deep comprehension. Imminently practical for students.
Additional Information About: The Thinker’s Guide to How to Read a Paragraph
Skilled readers do not read blindly, but purposely. They have an agenda, goal, or objective. Their purpose, together with the nature of what they are reading, determines how they read. They read in different ways in different situations for different purposes. Of course, reading has a nearly universal purpose: to figure out what an author has to say on a given subject.
How you read should be determined in part by what you read. Reflective readers read a textbook, for example, using a different mindset than they use when reading an article in a newspaper. Furthermore, reflective readers read a textbook in biology differently from the way they read a textbook in history.
The reflective mind improves its thinking by reflectively thinking about it. Likewise, it improves its reading by reflectively thinking about how it is reading. It moves back and forth between the cognitive (thinking) and the meta-cognitive (thinking about thinking). It moves forward a bit, then loops back upon itself to check on its own operations. It checks its tracks. It makes good its ground. It rises above itself and exercises oversight on itself.
One of the most important abilities that a thinker can have is the ability to monitor and assess his or her own thinking while processing the thinking of others. In reading, the reflective mind monitors how it is reading while it is reading. The foundation for this ability is knowledge of how the mind functions when reading well.
Having recognized this, we should also recognize that there are core reading tools and skills for reading any substantive text. These tools and skills are the focus of this guide.
Contents include:
Theory
The Premise of This Guide
Reading for a Purpose
Considering the Author’s Purpose
Developing a “Map” of Knowledge
Avoiding Impressionistic Reading and Writing
Reading Reflectively
Student Generated Map of Knowledge
Faculty Generated Map of Knowledge
Thinking About Reading While Reading
Engaging a Text
Books Are Teachers
Reading Minds
The Work of Reading
Five Levels of Close Reading
Structural Reading
How to Read a Sentence
How to Read a Paragraph
How to Read a Textbook
How to Read a Newspaper
How to Read an Editorial
Taking Ownership (Mark it Up)
Reading to Learn
Reading to Understand Systems of Thought
Reading Within Disciplines
The Art of Close Reading Practice
Exercises in Close Reading
The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson et. al.
Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
The Nineteenth-Century American by Henry Steele Commager
The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
Corn-Pone Opinions by Mark Twain
The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
The Idea of Education by John Henry Newman
Appendices
A. Sample Paraphrases
B. Analyzing the Logic of an Article, Essay, or Chapter
C. Analyzing the Logic of a Textbook
D. The Logic of Ecology
