Various Reading Habits

THREE HABITS. ONE ASSIGNMENT.Reading is a skill with several components. Like any craft, you have to practice the basics separately to acquire the skill more and more. Pick two of the following reading habits and fulfill the requirements listed under each. Start this assignment as soon as possible, for if you wait too late, you won’t have enough time to fulfill the assignment. Due Tuesday 24 November.1. READING WITH A PENCIL IN YOUR HANDFirst read this short excerpt by the philosopher Mortimer Adler on ‘How to Mark a Book’(https://pages.uoregon.edu/imcneely/Ians_webpage/Marking_a_book.html). Then try over the course of two weeks (four reading assignments) to incorporate Adler’s 6 or 7 suggestions. Every time you sit down to do the reading, grab your pencil, and self-consciously practice these techniques. After two weeks, write a reflection of about 450 words. In that reflection, talk about your experience of incorporating the book-marking techniques. Was it hard? Was it easy? If so, why do you think so? Did you begin to notice any benefits? (For example, better recall, easier to follow discussion in class, greater insight into the issues at the heart of our class?) Were their drawbacks? If you want to adopt this habit long-term, what would you need to do?2. READING WITHOUT DISTRACTIONThis habit is meant to develop your capacity to pay attention to the book you’re reading. Think of the book as your friend. How would you feel if your friend picked up her smartphone midway through an important conversation to look at Instagram or Facebook? Leave your computer off, put your phone in silent and out of reach, maybe even out of sight. Do the assigned reading in one sitting. That may mean you need to find a place where friends or other things can’t distract you, even accidentally. Aim to do an entire assigned reading in one sitting, but it is okay if only 40 minutes of uninterrupted reading is all you can achieve. Even 40 minutes may sound crazy, but give it a try. After two weeks, write a 450-word reflection. Talk about how easy or difficult it was to adopt this habit. What obstacles did you have to overcome (in your environment or in your own soul)? Were you impressed with yourself, or were you depressed that you couldn’t focus for very long? What could you do to persevere in reading without distraction? Did this exercise give you any insight to role of screen technology in your daily life?3. COMMONPLACE BOOKA very old and venerable tradition of reading is taking notes and keeping a commonplace book. A commonplace book is a separate notebook you keep (a comp book or a spiral notebook) where you keep track of your favourite passages from a book you are reading. If something moves you, inspires you, sounds brilliant or insightful, or in some other way seems worth remembering, then you just copy the passage (the whole quotation!) into your commonplace book. For this exercise, acquire a separate bound book (comp book or spiral) and just start copying out passages. At the end of your reading, you’ll have, in one place, all your favourite passages that you can look at in one place. Copy out passages by hand; this will aid your memory better than typing and printing. Keep a commonplace book for three weeks worth of reading assignments in class. Write a 450-word reflection. Talk about your experience of keeping a commonplace book. Was it a pleasure or a drudge? Was it easy or hard? Why do you think so? What prompted you to write something down in your commonplace book, and why? At the end of trying this exercise out, did you appreciate having a commonplace book, or did it some seem worthwhile?