The Art of Close Reading (Part One)

To read well requires one to develop one’s thinking about reading and, as a result, to learn how to engage in the process of what we call close reading. Students not only need to learn how to determine whether a text is worth reading, but also how to take ownership of a text’s important ideas (when it contains them). This requires the active use of intellectual skills. It requires command of the theory of close reading as well as guided practice based on that theory.

In this and the next few articles we focus on some of the fundamentals of close reading. We explain what it means to think through a text using theory of....

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