"To read critically" does NOT mean "to criticize" what you read. If you think that you have read a text critically simply by poking holes in its ideas, by finding its logical inconsistencies or weaknesses in its argument, or by denigrating its plot, style, characterization, and so forth, think again (literally!). Granted, every text has its weaknesses, and a good reader will recognize them. But every text also has strengths. If you only look for weaknesses, then you're not challenging your own perspective; you're not learning. Recognizing "positionality" Every text is written from a particular "position" or "location"—a particular "angle of vision," if you will. Every angle of vision (including your own!) reveals some aspects of a particular issue , and obscures others. To read "critically" entails: examining the text to determine the position from which it views a particular issue, and articulating to the best of your ability what that position is—what assumptions about the world are made, what agendas are at stake, what the text is trying to achieve, and so forth. exploring the benefits of viewing a particular issue through the lens provided by the position of the text. What does it enable the reader to perceive that you might not otherwise see? How is it helpful to the reader in engaging with that issue? exploring the costs of viewing a particular issue through the lens provided by the position of the text. What is obscured if you look through that lens? How might it hinder a reader from understanding the issue under consideration? looking back at oneself and one's own (necessarily partial and limited) position from the angle of vision provided by the text. What do you learn about your own position by viewing it from a different position? What do you learn FROM the position taken in the text (i.e., how might your own position be changed or broadened by your encounter with the text)? Distinguishing between what texts SAY and what texts DO The reader who focuses only on the content of a text is not reading critically; texts convey information ("what texts say"), yes, but they do so by means of particular literary and rhetorical devices that "do" something to the reader. In other words, a text is not merely a container for ideas, but an "agent" of sorts, one that forms a relationship with the reader and can, potentially, transform the reader. To read "critically," then, entails taking into account the "work" of the text by: attempting to discern what Umberto Eco calls the "model reader" of the text—an "ideal type whom the text not only foresees as a collaborator but also tries to create" (Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, 9). In other words, what kind of reader does the text want to have/to create? attempting to discern what Umberto Eco calls the "model author" of the text—not the empirical author, but a "voice [that] is manifested as a narrative strategy, as a set of instructions which is given to us step by step and which we have to follow when we decide to act as the model reader" (Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, 15). How does the text instruct you to read it? How are its instructions conveyed? exploring the relationship between what the text "says" and what the text "does." In most texts, this relationship is quite complex (In a satirical work, for instance, the content of the text contrasts strongly with its intended effect upon the reader). See my suggestions regarding preparing a close reading for some of the literary and rhetorical features of the text that you might examine. imagining oneself as the model reader of the text. If you were the model reader, what "work" would the text perform on you? What do you learn from this imaginative exercise? In short, a "critical" reader reads closely, with an awareness of: a) the positionality of a given text; b) the relationship between the content and the "work" of the text; and c) his/her own relationship to the text. A critical reader is at least as critical of himself/herself as (s)he is of the text, and is open to learning from the text.