Donald Murray Reading As A Reader Analysis

Donald M. Murray, in this article entitled “Reading as a Reader” is talking about how reading is an unique, an essential, and a necessary aptitude for human beings in their society. While illustrating his point of view, the author stresses on the idea that our attitudes towards reading is directly linked to the systematic approaches we have while facing a article or a book. In this article, he said that: “If we approach a text believing that we are not readers, or that we can’t read, that attitude may make it more difficult for us to understand the challenging text.”(Murray, 2). Throughout those words, Murray emphasizes that we should consider the process of reading as a learning process, and as a way of deepening the capacity we have as readers. We should have an open-mind while engaging with a reading, and understand that it may always not be our fault if it comes that the text we are reading is difficult. In clear, it is all part of the process of improving ourselves. Then, Murray, in his well structured writing, portrays differents types of reading and also gives us some tips on how to approach them.

The Art of reading appears as a practice that involve more than one components. The first one Murray talks about is the fact of “Reading for Experience”.

According to Murray, our approach while reading for appreciation is to discover the “how” of the writing. This case required us to pay particular attention to a multitude of details, like “[...] the rhythm, the pace, and the change in pace, the intensity.[...]”. (Murray, 8) Such procedures appeal us to listen carefully to the text as we are reading it. We need to try different frequencies while reading it. We need to put ourselves into different shoes to see how it sound. We then have to understand the characteristics of the type of reading we are interacting with. Also, we have to be aware of our likes and dislikes, but still be open to new insights in our