After reading the article and thinking about its ideas, I can see that I am a fairly strong reader by the standards mentioned in the article. I have many of the traits of strong readers mentioned, like the willingness to reread and to read things I am not familiar with. However, I lack some traits involved in performative literacy. For one, I don't have a very long attention span when reading material that does not interest me. I can only do so in short bursts. Only if I am interested can I truly pay attention to a writing piece for an extended period of time. I also do not really like to annotate or write down things I'm thinking, which is apparently a large part of metacognitive ability. I can usually remember what I was thinking, but I do not enjoy having to write it all down.
As mentioned before, I do not particularly like to annotate while I read. It is not a new concept to me. In fact, I have had to do it for years. I just do not prefer to stop every few seconds to comment on what I read. It breaks up the flow of reading for me and snaps me out of thoughts I would have had. Since I can usually recall my thoughts later, I never thought annotating was useful for me. I do it when I have to, but I prefer to read straight through text. This experience is just one of many, and I doubt I will be changing much when it comes to annotating.
This document did, however, bring to mind a few strategies I can use to improve my reading ability. The one that struck me most was the point about entertaining problems in understanding rather than dismissing them. When I read, I tend to skim over anything that is too complicated to understand at first glance. I often go back and reread, but it is more likely that I will skip over it. I suppose this has to do with the sustained concentration as well. I will be sure to really read over what I do not understand at first glance from now on.
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