Active, critical reading is a very important skill to have, especially in a college English course. There are many ways that you can be an active critical reader no matter what the size or difficulty of the passage is. Marking up the text is the easiest way to engage with the text because I have to find the most important parts of the passages to underline. After I have found an important piece within the passage, I usually write myself a note in the margin so that when I go back to it, I will remember why I thought it was important. Another important thing to do in order to be an active reader is to split up the passage into different parts, there usually one part of the passage that is able to tie the whole piece together, so I always look for that passage and split it apart from the rest of the piece. The last thing that I do when I am actively and critically reading is going back over the passage after I have fully marked up the piece because there always the possibility that I have missed an important piece of information when I was going over it the first time.
