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Critical Reading Strategies

Peterson's Technique for Critical Reading

1. Read the introduction.
2. Read the first half of the passage.
3. Answer as many questions as you can.
4. Use the remaining questions to guide your reading of the rest of the passage.

Types of Reading Passages

• Natural science: passage topics may include biology, chemistry, geology, and other sciences. Some passages may address these issues from a social or historical perspective.
  
  
• Social science: passage topics may include history, social and political movements, and other issues involving people.
  
  
• Humanities: passage topics may include poetry, literature, languages, philosophy, and other issues related to thinking and writing.
  
  
• Narrative: memoir or a personal account of an event in someone's life.
  
  
• Paired Passages: one section which contains two passages, written by different authors, each of whom addresses the same topic from a different point of view.

Common Critical Reading Question Types

• Primary Purpose/Main Point: ask about the main points in a reading passage (don't answer these until you have read the entire passage).
  
  
• Detail: test your understanding of what is explicitly mentioned in the passage.
  
  
• Inference: ask you to read between the lines and recognize what the author implies in the passage.
  
  
• Vocabulary in Context: test your understanding of how certain words are used in the passage.
  
  
• Why?: ask for the reason the author does or says something specific in the passage.
  
  
• Tone: ask how the author expresses her or her ideas.

Peterson's Technique for Paired Passages

1. Follow Peterson's Technique for Critical Reading for the first passage.
2. Answer questions related to the first passage only.
3. Follow Peterson's Technique for Critical Reading for the second passage.
4. Answer questions related to the second passage only.
5. Answer the Comparison questions.

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