Actively Reading

Looking at the quote "what you get out of your reading depends on how you read," one can suppose to be taught an effective process of reading as well as to be challenged in other areas.  Not a challenge in terms of difficulty but a measure of how much time and effort one is willing to put into their work.  This is where the processes of annotation, asking questions, and commentating with the piece of reading come into play.  After reading the assigned chapter I think its easy to make a distinction between "actively reading" and "passively reading" and to see the steps to take to properly understand a text.  One can not merely read a passage and always fully understand.  Sometimes it takes a bit of deciphering or breaking down of the text through analyzation of the author's "language" and the way he writes or possibly looking for points of "repetition."  Even when a passage is easily understood, one can find further meaning by relating the story to their own experiences or events in their life.  This is insightful in the way that no matter what were reading we should always go in with the goal of "actively reading" so as to get the most out of not just this class, but everything we read.  I like this because it pushes us as students and helps us gain more from the class then just literature, but things we can apply outside the classroom in our everyday lives as well. 

 I think that this is a concept that I can relate to. When their is a text I want to understand, I take the time to fully read it and "analyze" it.   In the event that I have to read something that I feel is boring I usually will try to do it just to get it over with.  Now I see that this is a method that is only cheating myself and that I should try to fully understand any text that comes my way.