Much like the literacy example provided in section 5.1, you may encounter situations in different disciplines where you discover your literacy strengths and weaknesses. It’s important to understand that cross-disciplinary literacy, or developing literacy in different subjects, is crucial to your success. If a professor gives you a novel in a Literature class, you may excel at it because you’ve had a lot of experience reading novels in your personal time. However, another professor may give you an article in a Sociology class that may provide greater challenge because you’ve had less experience interpreting statistics. It’s important to remember that you may have to approach readings differently depending on the class – you may have to pose different questions or focus on certain details over others to understand what a reading is trying to say.

Reading and thinking critically is a process. Deep comprehension of information requires your full use of the reading process, as well as time and patience. The following tips for high level comprehension should be helpful whether you’re reading in a Math, English, Sociology, or any other class.

Tips for high level comprehension

• Give yourself adequate time to use the reading process.
• Plan on marking up the text or making extensive notes.
• Accurately summarize the information to assure you have the message right
• Be attentive to your responses as you read.
• Process the information in a way that is useful to you (graphic organizer, notes, outline, etc.)
• Analyze to determine not only what the author directly/literally says, but also for what the author indirectly says.
• Determine the value of this information for your purposes.