Alex Nabolotny's Importance in Reading

As a student I try to be a very active reader. I always want to try and get as much content out of an article or textbook. I find this hard to do sometimes, especially with readings that do not hold my attention. Because of this I have tried to think of tricks to help me get the main ideas out of articles or textbooks without having to read everything thoroughly. One thing that I always try to do is highlight. I highlight what I believe are the authors main ideas and this usually helps me understand the content of the article. However, sometimes it is easy to get highlight crazy and highlight every word on the page, and then that kind of defeats the purpose. Because of this I try to, along with highlighting, write down some notes in the margins of the text or article. They are usually short sentences, or even questions that I have about the reading. The questions help me stay focused on the reading because as I continue to read I am searching for the answer to my question. Reading for school and reading for pleasure are two different types of reading and I use different comprehension skills for each. Books that I read for pleasure are written differently than textbooks and therefore they do not require the highlighting and note-taking. I do, though, think of questions as I read for pleasure. I also look closely at the dialogue because it is important to see what is going on in the character's lives.

Interestingly enough, in one of my classes we did an activity on reading comprehension. My teacher gave us a short story and told us to underline things that we thought were important to the story. I thought this activity was really beneficial because I was able to see what my classmates underlined, what they thought was important. It got me thinking about reading comprehension and how students can and will interpret stories differently. Obviously there are certain texts where there is only one main idea, but at times there can be some discrepancy between main ideas.

Overall I think the most important things to do when reading is highlight or underline the important things. This will help you get to the point and allow you to comprehend the story better.