Chapter 5, Section 5.1

When you read with the grain of a text, you see the world through the author's perspective, apply the texts insights to new contexts, and connect its ideas to your own experience and personal knowledge.
When you read against the grain, you resist it by questioning its points, raising doubts, analyzing the limits of it's perspective, or even refuting its argument. It is very important to read a text and be able to analyze and really understand it. You should be able to summarize it's ideas.

Both, reading against the grain and reading with the grain are extremely important strategies. There are suggestions for both listed in the text.

Suggestions for reading with the grain:

• Listen to the text, follow the author without judgment.
• Try and see the subject through the author's perspective.
• Add support to thesis with your own points and examples.
• Apply the argument in new ways.

Suggestions for reading against the grain:

• Challenge, question, and resist the author's ideas.
• Point out what the author missed or overlooked.
• Identify what is unsupported or inaccurate in the argument.
• Rebut the author's ideas with counter-reasoning  and counterexamples.

There are a variety of things that make college reading difficult and prevent you from reading effectively. Some things that make it difficult are: new subject matter, vocabulary-unfamiliar words or language, unfamiliar rhetorical context-not knowing the author's purpose or intended audience, unfamiliar genre-different genres require different reading strategies, and/or a lack of background knowledge-not understanding culture or context.

Some strategies for overcoming these difficulties and reading like an expert are:

• Reconstruct the rhetorical context. (Ask questions about purpose, audience, etc. Look up info about the author.)
• Take notes
• Match your reading speed with your goals.
• Read a complex text in a "multidraft" way.
• Use summary writing.

Summary writing is a condensed, abstract version of the text. It demonstrates your understanding and can help you retain what you read in order to analyze the text and create new views and arguments.