Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. May not be reproduced or posted to a publicly accessible website. Evaluating and Responding to Texts As a student, you will read materials your instructor assigns, as well as those you select on your own. Examples of reading materials include novels, nonfiction books, textbooks, and journal articles. The texts you read may be literature, literary nonfiction, expository, or informational. The material you read may be print, digital, or both. You will read for a wide variety of purposes, including: • to be entertained • to be informed • to take action • to appreciate a writer’s craft or • to discover models for your own writing. Knowing your purpose for reading can help you gain more meaning from the text. It is necessary that you retain the information you read if you are to evaluate it. To comprehend means to grasp or understand. Reading comprehension, therefore, is the ability to understand what you read. It involves processing the words and decoding their meanings to determine what is being conveyed. You will need to apply critical-reading skills when reading assignments. Critical reading is a type of active reading in which the reader analyzes content during and after reading. It involves reviewing the text, identifying its strengths and weaknesses, and evaluating its credibility. When reading a text, it is a good idea to highlight important points or use Post-it Notes to record your thoughts and questions. If the material is in a digital format, the reading device will probably have tools that enable you to make notes and highlight information. In taking notes, graphic organizers can be a valuable technique to record and analyze information. Evaluating a Text The goal of evaluating a text is to form an opinion or judgment about the content, quality, or validity of the content with the intent of communicating your opinion to others later. Evaluating a text begins with sum- marizing the main idea of the text in order to grasp what it is about. Then, you can begin to analyze various aspects of the text so you can understand it more fully. Finally, the information you learned through your evaluation can be used to develop your own thoughts about the text. These thoughts about the text, com- bined with any conclusions you have made about the content, will help you communicate your ideas and opinions. Main Idea To begin your evaluation, summarize the main idea of the text. The main idea is the central message of the text. Authors write to convey a message to the reader. If you do not have a clear idea of what the text is about, you will not be able to evaluate it. Your summary should be simple, such as one or two sentences or a paragraph, depending on the length of the text. It should retell the main idea in your own words and provide a short review of the reasoning behind your interpretation of the main idea.