Strategies for approaching an English text:
1. Familiarize yourself with your text:
Open your textbook and spend about 10 to 20 minutes trying to familiarize yourself with the format and content of the text.
— Is there a table of contents? An introduction, foreword, or preface? An index? A bibliography or works cited page? A glossary? Appendices? How is your text organized?
— Often in an anthology of scholarly journal articles or in compilations/selections of authors’ works there will be a table of contents which will show you how the anthology or work is broken down. Essentially this contents is an at a glance overview of what the anthology contains and should explain whether the organizational method is by author, subject matter, date, etc. A table of contents also usually provides the reader with page numbers of where the work can be found within the text and is traditionally located towards the front of the text itself.
— An index is usually found at the back of the text and often contains page numbers of key terms, figures, dates, subjects, etc. which are referred to in the text. Indices are convenient tools particularly when you are browsing a book as a possible source for an essay or research paper. This is because an index allows the reader to search at a glance through the text and directs you only to pages within the text in which the subject terms of your search may be found. However, it is advisable to still comb through the text in order to determine what pages are in fact useful to you because the index will only list pages where that subject is mentioned directly by name rather than in association with other similar or related terms.
— With an introduction, foreword, or preface, an author or editor of a work often uses these sections of the text as an opening into the bulk content of the text. In this section, subject material may be introduced as well as background information on the author, the time period of the piece, and other additional information which the author believes may be of use to readers. These sections can be similar to a table of contents because introductions tend to provide an overview of the author’s layout of organization for the rest of the work and are traditionally found in the front of the text after the table of contents.
— A glossary is similar to an index with the exception that most of the terms contained within the glossary would either reference the page where a definition of the term can be found in the text or the page in the glossary actually provides the definition of the term for the reader. This can be a useful tool because it allows the reader to understand the parameters of the term being used by the author within the same context as the author may understand it.
— A bibliography or works cited page is usually at the end of particular essays or works by an author within an anthology and are used to identify and refer to the primary and secondary sources where the author had used in developing their own writing. These pages are extremely useful when writing a research paper or literary essay because it provides the reader with additional source material on particular subjects which you can look up for yourself to further your own research.
— Appendices are similar in function to an index but may contain additional information which may not have been provided in the main portion of the text which the author may still find useful for the reader’s understanding. Often maps, tables, diagrams, photographs, etc. may be presented in these sections and referred to by the author earlier in the text for the reader to reference as they read.
2. Close reading a text:
What is close reading?
—Close reading is a very careful, deliberate reading of a text. When a professor asks you to close read a text they are asking you to pay very close attention to what you are reading and to focus in on the little details and nuances of the text while you read instead of simply focusing at the face value of the words on the page. Close reading involves annotating a text in order to further your understanding of what you are reading through your interaction with the text. There are ways in which you can improve your ability to close read a text, some of which are listed below. These reading strategies will increase your ability to retain information, analyze, and understand working with literary texts in order to be a more accomplished, better prepared scholar of English.
3. Annotating a text:
What does it mean to annotate a text?
— Take notes on what you are reading
— Highlight, underline, circle, and/or mark up the text paying particular attention to points you find interesting, sections where you may disagree with the author or places where you have questions.
— Often your professor will ask you to look for particular concepts, ideas, or techniques while you read, so be sure to have those items written down on a sticky note or sheet of notebook paper to remind you while you read (you can also just keep it in mind while you read the text that you need to be looking for those items)
— When you annotate and close read a text, be sure to highlight or mark words or vocabulary which might be unfamiliar to you. Then go look them up in a dictionary or (for literary theory or terminology) a reference book is also useful. Knowing that a word is unfamiliar to you is not useful to you, but knowing what that unfamiliar word means and how to use it is useful! Therefore, do not be afraid to look up words you do not know. Looking up unfamiliar terms helps you to advance your learning and is applicable in every discipline.
3. Test your comprehension:
— After you have read through the text at least once for a good understanding of it, go back and read it again. This time try to follow the author’s train of thought as far as the techniques they used, or the coherence and clarity of their ideas.
— If what you are reading is an article in a scholarly journal or another form of literary essay writing, can you clearly locate the author’s thesis statement? Does the author consistently refer back to this main argument or do they deviate from their argument throughout the paper?
— It also helps to do a little research on the author you are going to read about. Spending five to ten minutes looking up little bits of the author’s history and other publications associated with that author will help you to have a better understanding of the context behind the literary work itself as well as enrich your comprehension and analysis of the author’s work. This skill is one which is necessary in a variety of disciplines and will greatly improve your ability to retain the material gleaned from the work because you will have invested more time, effort, interest and energy into what you are reading.
— Remember those questions your professor asked you to look at when examining the text? Go back and try to answer those questions. Are all of them able to be addressed? If some were not able to be addressed immediately following the reading, give yourself time to consider those questions and your possible responses to them. English literature tends to be highly analytical in nature and more often your responses will differ from your classmates because unlike in other disciplines, there is not always a concrete answer to questions pertaining to literature or writing.
— To help you better retain and understand the material you are reading try to paraphrase what the author may be saying in one paragraph, in a sentence, or as their overall theme/thesis for the paper. Write it down. Recording your thoughts about the text will help you remember it later when you need to recall it during class discussions.
— After you have read through the poem, play, narrative, memoir, essay, or other form of literary writing, try to answer this question of the text: “So what?” When asking this question, try to ponder out what the underlying significance is of this writing. What is the author trying to argue? Why should this argument matter? Is there something beyond the surface reading of the text which the author wants you to understand? How does this piece of literature relate to other works you have read? How does it relate to your own life? What does it say about human nature, languages, cultures, the world, etc? What in the text is revolutionary or original? What about the text really caught your interest and why? What makes the text so interesting, confusing or enlightening? Why does this matter? By answering these kinds of questions while you read your ability to grasp the overall significance of the text and improve your own synthesis and understanding of the material.
The guidelines provided above are a compilation of advice gleaned from professors, other students, tutoring, and my own study strategies through my academic study of English Literature. Throughout my academic career these strategies have proven to be a success in helping to advance my understanding of my major and other disciplines. I hope they continue to work well for you for years to come!
Caitlin F. Hennessey
CAE Writing Associate,
English and French Content Tutor
