Whether for personal development or studying purposes, learning how to read critically can be useful. Not only can it help you to understand a book with more depth, but it can also lead you to make more informed decisions when teasing out what you like and dislike when it comes to reading.
Reading critically simply refers to an approach to reading whereby you focus on language analysis and delve deep into the text to look for meaning that may not be immediately obvious. This involves reading beyond just the words on the page and can include looking at the structure, tone, mood, purpose, notable imagery, themes, and more.
So, here are a few tips with things to keep in mind if you want to adopt a more critical approach to reading:
6 Ways to Read Critically
1. Think About the Target Audience
When you’re trying to read critically, you should avoid only reading as you normally would. We usually focus primarily on the story when we pick up a book, aiming to follow it from beginning to end, picking up the things that interest us as we go along. To read critically, you should be able to read like this while also thinking about who the target audience is and trying to put yourself in their shoes.
Whomever the story is written for, whether that be a certain gender, race, age group, class, country, and so on, will greatly inform the way an author writes a story. For example, a book written for older children will usually be written in more straightforward language but still retain a lot of imagery and metaphor that can appeal to adults. However, an adult reading this book is going to have a different experience to a child in the book’s target audience and you should keep this in mind while reading it to make informed judgements about the way it’s written and the messages it shares.
2. Be Open-Minded
Leading on from the previous point, sometimes if you aren’t part of the target audience of a book, it can be hard to connect to it at all. In cases like this, especially if the book you want to read critically is some kind of assigned reading, you’ll want to keep an open mind when reading the book. By this, I mean that you should avoid only applying your usual ways of thinking to the book without approaching it from different angles.
Especially when reading old books, you might find yourself disagreeing with or not understanding the events or the characters’ actions in the story. To reduce this problem, you need to be open-minded, analysing from a more objective standpoint as well as your own subjective one. Both interpretations will be valid. The only thing that would not be valid is refusing to take any interpretation but your own into account.
3. Familiarise Yourself With Context
One thing that will help you with the previous two points is context. Context is the external influences on something that become a means through which it can be understood. When it comes to novels, understanding the historical, social, cultural, and political context that they are influenced by can elevate your interpretation of them. Are you reading through the lens of a particular theme? Is your focus on the historical period the novel was written in? Do you know the cultural significance of a certain scene?
If you have little or no knowledge of a certain kind of context, it can hinder your ability to read critically. It is difficult to analyse a piece of writing without at least a base level of knowledge of the important pieces of the context surrounding it, so looking up things like the author’s biography, the important events of the year it was written in the country it was written, and even the significance of the words in the title can make it easier to read critically.
4. Read Slowly
If you need to, take your time when reading critically. You don’t want to miss or misinterpret something. Go over things, double check paragraphs for meaning. If something is a little bit tricky to understand at first, go over it slowly. Even read the whole book twice if you have time. Don’t worry about not understanding every little thing immediately, give yourself time to get to grips with the more difficult aspects of the novel that you come across.
5. Research While Reading
This one goes without saying, considering most of these tips are centred on learning about the book outside of what is on the page, but it’s important, nonetheless. Whenever you encounter a point you are unsure about or don’t understand, you can look it up. You don’t need to spend hours trying to pick everything apart when there are resources online that can help you. Just make sure your research is somewhat thorough, and that you use a reputable source, just to be sure you’re getting the right information.
Don’t be afraid to look up a summary if necessary. Not only is it a great way to remind yourself of the order of events, but it will also pick out the most important points that you should not miss or pay extra attention to, and you can spend more time researching and analysing these aspects to get the most out of your reading once you know what they are.
6. Make Notes
Finally, it’s a good idea to keep track of all the research and analysis you undertake while reading critically. Making notes in a notebook, on sticky notes, or directly in the margins of a book can be a great way of tracking your observations and important things about context, target audience and language analysis.
If you don’t keep track of your findings somehow, it’s going to be very difficult to read critically in an effective way. You may not remember everything, and a brief note you make in the beginning can end up linking to something else in the middle or the end. If you keep track of your thoughts and the previous connections you found, you can easily locate them and link them to others. If you don’t, you may just forget everything.
This may not be an exhaustive list of ways to read critically, but it’s a great place to start. As a bonus tip and a reminder, your aims will always inform your reading, so make sure you keep them in mind each time you revisit your text. Reading critically to decide what you think about a book will be far different from reading critically to assess the impact a book may have on certain audiences, but there’s also no reason these approaches can’t be used in tandem.
While there is no need to read critically all the time if it doesn’t appeal to you, it can be a useful skill to develop if ever you need to write an essay or a review of a piece of writing. It’s also a very fulfilling experience, as many authors write beautifully, and an analysis of their writing might open your eyes to an image or a theme you had not initially realised was there. So, if you do have to read critically, try to acknowledge the effort that goes into crafting a novel, and you might just enjoy it a little more!
What are your go-to tips for critical reading?
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