Linda Felbinger
November 22, 2017
English 111
Reading Literacy Pre-Semester
Young Reading
Many parents are accustomed to reading fairytale books to their children, my parents however, were not the typical fairytale reading type. I did not enjoy the simple prince and princess stories. I was always more of a thrilling type of book girl. I refused to go to sleep unless I was read a bedtime story. My go-to was a book filled with multiple stories that was about the magical world where all animals could speak to humans. My favorite of all was The Jungle Book. It was thrilling and spoke to me. As I got older these books stayed my favorite. Thrillers, along with mystical books speak to me in a way that there could be another sort of world out there. This has always been mesmerizing in a way. My least favorite thing to do is to listen to audiobooks. I feel like the fact that I can be doing something else at the same time, distracts me from the meaning of taking time for yourself to enjoy a good book.
I have never really been taught a specific way to read my literature. I have not yet been told to simply find the answers in the writing. So far I always read the text to understand the literature and to appreciate it for how it was meant to be read. I did not think that reading was important other than the fact that I started to notice my vocabulary getting stronger throughout elementary and middle school. I found this was because I was reading higher level books from my other classmates and I enjoyed it a great deal. From the context clues I started to understand more and more words that I did not know before.
Within my college career, I plan on reading everything for my classes as expected due to the fact that I want to not only memorize the knowledge, I want to be able to understand and to retain the material that I am learning. The fact that I will be needed to write papers on the topic that I am given will help me to do just this.
This past semester I have learned a lot about how to better my studying habits along with what helps me study. Two of these methods include Cornell Notes and SQ4R. Cornell Notes are when a part of the notes are sectioned off for just questions and/or main ideas and the other half is there to answer the question that was asked. At the end of all Cornell Notes it is common to summarize what was learned while taking these notes.
Another way of reading and note-taking is by using the SQ4R method. This is a completely different perspective of viewing your reading and notes. SQ4R stand for survey, question, read, recite, record, and review. Survey means that you should scan over the article or textbook in order to find main ideas. Questions should be thought of when you read about the main ideas. When you read, the entire book/article should be read, not just “scanned” over. Reciting your notes or paper before editing can spark more thoughts on how to edit or better your notes. Last but not least is reviewing. To review is to edit your paper/notes so that the paper is ready to be a final copy.
Throughout this past semester I have learned many things within my English 111 class. I have learned how to better my editing skills along with why grammar is so incredibly important. Along with this I have also been shown on how to cite my sources for research papers and why it is important to do this correctly. I now know that citations always need the date when you last accessed the page along with the correct title. One thing that I still have to work on is not preaching to “you”. I should not write to the reader I should write to the general public. This will help more people to connect with my writing rather than accusing people of being like me. I look forward to using all of these skills within my future of writing.