Active, critical reading (meaning note taking) is not my forte. I am incredibly ADD and to read something while also taking notes is difficult. I often prefer to read it several times, perhaps highlighting a line or two, and then consider myself set, as shown by the photos of my annotations on Tan’s essay I realize that this is not the preferred method by most of my instructors, but I feel as if I am perfectly able to participate in discussions, then it isn’t detrimental to my classwork or learning abilities. I think often times the education system focuses too closely on neurotypical learners and forgets that there is a number of people for whom conventional learning systems aren’t functional, myself being one of them. I’m also a very auditory learner, hence my ease at learning useless song lyrics, but not necessarily the verb conjugations for Spanish verbs. Because of this, I often find reading things out loud helps me absorb them better, and I will read essays and other such readings aloud to myself at least once or twice to ensure I retain all the necessary information. This goes doubly for articles online, because I tend to avoid printing things out, and would much rather read them in a .pdf format than waste paper by printing and not marking up. I think when I am reading an article, not just skimming, I look for things that the teacher wants us to look for, but I also keep a close mental note on the parts that strike me as particularly interesting, as often times discussions frequently get derailed, and while the text may stay the focus of the conversation, it may not be the original question that is being discussed. I will admit that I am often a derailer myself, and thus need to be prepared to follow up on any given tangent I may mention during class, should it turn to that.

323 Words

https://files.uneportfolio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2054/2019/12/Tan-Mother-Tongue-copy.pdf