I have always been a fan of reading. When I’m bored reading nova it’s an entertaining way to kill time. However, when it comes to reading academic english paper, it’s not joyful. Through past 4 month learning how to master college level writing and reading with Professor Grown, luckily i have improved a lot. Well, at least I won’t pass out while im reading an academic paper. When it comes to reading a challenging paper like Khanmen’s “Don’t blink, the….” it’s important to not just to read it. In order to deeply engage and understand it , readers should annotate as they read. It’s extremely vital to me, because it will not only keep me awake, but also provide me a next level understanding to it. During my reading process, one strategy I often practice is  underlining important concepts, sentences and arguments. Writing notes about why is it important ? What’s my perspective towards this argument? I agree or disagree with certain statements are always helpful. Moreover, write a short paragraph of summarizing at the end of each page can be useful. That way in the future when you are paraphysing the whole paper, it will be easier for you to go back and take a close look at the notes you wrote so you can accurately present Author’s Idea in your own paper. 

Before I taking this course, I didn’t have the ability nor the interest in annotating. However, through the last 3 month of learning, I understood the importance of annotating and the advantages it can bring to me.  I believe that I have developed the reading habits to help me understand papers like “Don’t Blind, The Hazard….” with such complexity and length. With efficient reading habit like underlying imperative concepts and writing notes, I think that it helped me with capturing author’s essential idea for reading task that was assigned previously.  Moreover, it also does make the reading process more interesting which is extremely important because it helps me maintain concentration therefore i can finish reading. Of course, there is plenty of room for me to develop but I believe that I have made some major progress through this course.

One thing that i believe i should improve in the future is being able to continue to practice a healthy reading habit at variable type of reading task at all level of difficulty. I’m afraid that after this course I will abandon this habit. Being able to pick up this habit and use it in dailybasis is one thing that I need to focus on. Furthermore, I don’t think that my current annotating ability is capable of helping me understand the next level college reading in the future. In order for me to be prepared for advanced college reading material, I think I need to learn some new efficient reading habits along the way. The main reason is Junior year doesn’t seem so far away from now. New reading habits can be crucial when it comes to determining my future success in college.