Richa Cartwright

Dr. Turner
English 131
September 12, 2016
Chapter 1 & 2 Outline
Critical reading is the main point in chapter one. The chapter starts by listing the different kinds
of reading. The first was Reading for Pleasure and it is stated that reading for pleasure is
supposed to be released and uncritical. The second was Reading for Information and this kind of
reading is usually done at work or at school. So completing an assignment is the main purpose of
reading for information. Then there is Casual Reading and this is most common. People that read
casually, read because they must and not because they have to. The last and most important kind
of reading is Critical Reading and this is the kind of reading you must do for college classes and
so on.
So the main question this chapter proposes is What is critical reading? Critical reading is a
type of reading where the reader engages with the writer and breaks down the text by analyzing,
synthesizing and evaluating the reading.
This chapter has many steps to being a professional critical reader. Some are reading actively
which means to determine the authors main point as well as any secondary effects that stem from
it. Another is to demystify the writer, meaning that we should be very critical and hard on the
writer because writers also make mistakes. The last and main point is to understand the writers
opening context.

Chapter two talks about Rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of putting ones case in the strongest and
best possible way. It is all the strategies of communicating in speech and writing that we use
daily in an attempt to sway each other. This chapter also talks a lot about how students often
confuse rhetoric and grammar but they are very different. The book states that Grammar tells a
writer how words should be used and sentences framed.
In todays world, grammar is often used to describe a person and people use it to judge your
intelligence. Grammar is more in terms of rules than Rhetoric does, which is in terms of
effectiveness. So the book gives an example about rhetoric being effective. The example is how a
person would use simple words and sentences to get a child to understand but in a scholarly
paper it may not be acceptable.