My most challenging reading assignment in high school was the nonfiction literature that we had to read in a set amount of time and then write an essay about. It was difficult because we were asked to analyze the text while reading it in a short time and gathering enough information from annotations and memorization to recall when we were presented with the prompt. I approached this by first looking at the prompt and then reading the text for not only key features of the prompt, but also by annotating the text with questions that popped in my head or relating it to my own experiences to make the passage, which topic didn’t interest me, more engaging to read. Jotting down notes as I went and highlighting repetitive phrases and tone shifts helped me to analyze the text more thoroughly even though it was not an interesting topic.
