What are critical reading skills?

As readers make sense of what they read, they use various relationships of ideas to aid recognition and fluency.

Critical reading as a goal includes the ability to evaluate ideas socially or politically.

Critical reading skills are the ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize what one reads. They are the ability to see relationships of ideas and use them as an aid in reading.

Here are some examples of critical reading skills:

• Seeing questions and expecting answers

• Seeing cause and effect

  Example:

  Being able to supply the correct word in a clause such as this one: “If you drop it, it will b...”

• Seeing steps in a process

  Example:

  Being able to supply the correct word in a clause such as this one: “Pull up a chair and s...”

• Seeing comparisons

  Example:

  Being able to supply the correct word in a phrase such as this one: “As big as an e...”

• Seeing generalization and itemization

  Example:

  Being able to supply the correct word in a phrase such as this one: “Fruits that grow in our village are ...”

• What is critical literacy?
• What are reading skills?

• Halvorson 1992

• Concept module: critical reading skills
• In overview module: Glossary (Literacy): C
• In modular book: Glossary of literacy terms
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 2 July 1998

© 1999 SIL International