8 How Do I Read?
Read, read, and read some more. That’s all that Sophie felt she ever did in her graduate program. When she enrolled in her graduate program, Sophie had visions of meeting frequently in small groups for hours of scintillating discussion, perhaps followed by an evening out with her favorite fellow graduate students or even her professors for a light meal or drinks. Sophie imagined attending great debates out of which insights showered like sparks. Instead, Sophie read and then read some more. And when Sophie brought some nascent insight of her own to share with her graduate advisor, he sent her on her way with a list of more reading to do. But, Sophie wondered, was she learning anything?
Reading
Reading is a big part of studying, more so in some instructional programs than others but still prevalent in most. If you’re not skilled at reading, then you may well struggle in your studies. Conversely, if you have strong reading skills, you may well excel in a wide variety of educational programs. Reading is a highly valuable skill. Oddly, though, once you learn to read, literally to make sense of words on the page or screen, you may not get substantial additional instruction on how to be an effective reader. Making sense of the words on the page or screen isn’t enough to be an effective reader, in instruction at higher levels where students read substantial quantities of text. As text multiplies, readers have to learn how to draw comprehension, organization, and priority information from the text. Readers must also learn how to retain priority information after reading and may benefit from evaluating the author’s credentials and perspective, and the consistency, quality, logic, and authority of the assertions in the text. Few things will pay such dividends in education as developing your reading skill. Good readers are generally good students.
Purpose
A first step in effective reading has to do with your purpose for reading. We can read with several different intentions in mind. We can certainly read for pleasure and entertainment. Nothing makes for a good vacation like bringing along a good book. When we read for pleasure, we read different material and in a different manner than when we read for intellectual development, broad academic knowledge, specific professional skills, or to pass a school or professional licensing exam. Some things we read for general knowledge. Other things we read for specific detail to recall. Still other things we read for useful protocols or routines, or to refine skills. Set your goal for reading before you begin reading. Project what you need or want to draw from the text. Picture yourself after having read the text. Do you want to be amused, entertained, informed, prepared, or skilled? Be sure that you know what you need to draw from the text. If you’re reading purely for exploration, then know that, too.
Readiness
Reading readiness can also be an issue. To read effectively, you generally need the time, attention, and ability to concentrate. If you are instead short of time, distracted, sleep deprived, and lacking hydration and nutrition, your reading is likely to be less effective if effective at all. If to read effectively it’s necessary first to get something to eat and drink, make a quick phone call, or catch a quick nap, then do so. Don’t procrastinate over reading. Get started as soon as you can. But don’t waste time struggling over reading because you are not ready to engage the text. Also, estimate the time you expect the reading to take and the time that you have to read. Try to match your available time with the time you need to read. Reading when you know that you have inadequate time produces a stress that reduces reading concentration and retention. If you only have a little time to read, then expect only to read a little, giving it your full attention. Reading in small bits, stealing a little time here and there, is fine. Time adds up, and in between your readings you can be processing what you read. Pay attention to your reading readiness. Knowing your purpose for reading and being ready to read together put you in good stead.
Author
In many instances, knowing something about the author and the author’s experience and perspective can aid your reading. It’s not that you must know the author’s name and reputation, although if you’re reading Shakespeare or Milton, then you indeed should. Instead, get a sense of the author’s credentials for sharing what is in the text. Did, for instance, the author have a lifetime of experience with the subject, or is the author sharing what it’s like for a novice to encounter the subject? Does the author intend the text to be authoritative, as gospel on the subject, or is the author surmising while inviting the reader to question, evaluate, and test? Does the author have an ideological, philosophical, political, spiritual, or other perspective the author is promoting or sharing, as we all to some degree do? If so, how is that perspective coloring the information the text presents? You may not, from the instructor who assigns the text, from the text itself, or from a minute’s online investigation, have the answers to these questions. But even if not, keep them in mind as you read. The author’s purpose, experience, and perspective matters to how you read and what you should draw from the text.
Organization
Knowing the organization of what you read before you dive into it can focus your reading while saving you substantial time and confusion. Review the reading’s table of contents to see where the text starts, how it proceeds, and where it concludes. Depending on your purpose for reading, you may immediately find that you need not read certain sections. You may, for instance, already know the preliminaries so that you can skip to the heart of the text. Or you may instead only need to read the one section that has to do with your purpose for reading, skipping entire other sections. Or you may only need to read the introductory statements and the conclusion, again depending on your purpose for reading. You may alternatively want to read a key part of the text in which you have the greatest interest and only then go back to the start and read straight through. Even if you must read the whole text, knowing the text’s organization and the priority sections can help speed and focus your reading.
Conclusion
If your purpose for reading is instructional, as this guide presumes, rather than for entertainment or amusement, you should not hesitate to get to the reading’s point. You should, for instance, generally first read any abstract or summary the text offers. You may even want to skip right to the final chapter or other conclusion to read first, before returning to the introductory materials and the argument or explanation sections. Don’t let the suspense kill you. Instead, consider reading the text backward (figuratively) from the conclusion to the supporting arguments. You may benefit from knowing the end before exploring the route that takes you there. The author may give you the text’s conclusion or point up front, or at least foreshadow it. But don’t hesitate to make a quick review of the final chapters or sections. By doing so, you may find that you can cut out a significant part of the reading.
Headings
Reviewing headings and subheadings can be another way to get a clear sense of the organization, direction, and conclusion of a text. Don’t just dive into the details of the text, letting each next heading surprise you. Instead, first flip ahead through each part, chapter, or section of the text, briefly examining the headings and subheadings. Doing so will give you a structure within which to place what you read. Doing so may also enable you to focus on certain key sections and skim or even skip other sections that you know do not contribute to your purpose for reading the text. Use chapter or section headings and subheadings to structure and guide your reading. Those headings can also become your memory aids for details within the text that you may need to recall later.
Memory
Students with well-developed reading skills may comprehend and remember so effectively and silently as not to engage in anything that you can observe as you watch them read. But strong readers are exercising skills, particularly around working memory and short-term memory. Short-term memory is that brief time and space within which the words that you read and comprehension that you form resonates in mind. What you read may leave an impression that lasts for only ten or twenty seconds. You can only hold a limited number of items in short-term memory at once. A key to reading effectively is to preserve and amplify short-term memories so that they can subtly move into intermediate and then long-term memory. Working memory, akin to short-term memory, is that brief time and space within which you can manipulate the limited number of new items you hold in mind. Reading effectively has an enormous amount to do with how you use short-term and working memory.
Skills
To make good use of your working and short-term memory, as you read, identify priority concepts, particularly new terms or concepts and their relationships, and new procedures or protocols for doing new things. When you read a new concept or procedure, pause to mentally mark that information with an associated word or phrase. Repeat and elaborate the word or phrase and its association with the new information. Do so again at the end of the passage and again at the end of the section or chapter. Rehearsing the new information in this fashion helps to extend it beyond short-term memory and into intermediate memory. Intermediate or transitional memory lasts a few hours or a day or so. Making notes of priority concepts and procedures during and after your reading further rehearses the memory, solidifying it in intermediate memory and preparing to extend it into long-term memory with review and rehearsal in the following days. Use these skills to increase your reading retention and effectiveness.
Processing
The prior paragraph describes how strong readers process new information from the stimulus that reading constitutes, into memory in an organized fashion suitable for ready retrieval. Effective processing is critical to reading skill. But effective processing is also critical for other academic and intellectual work generally. The stronger your processing skills, the swifter and surer your learning, and the better your academic success. Your working memory and processing improve as your attention control, attention switching, knowledge base, and phonetic and visuospatial skills improve, all hand in hand. The more you practice and hone your reading skills, the more you are honing your memory, processing, reasoning, fluid intelligence, crystallized or stored knowledge, and other cognitive skills. Monitor your attention, concentration, working memory, and memory overload to improve your reading and processing skills.
Activities
Students studying from text commonly engage in other activities, some of them more beneficial than others. Taking notes from the text while reading can provide a good benefit to learning from the text. In reading, as elsewhere in learning, the more active the processing, the greater the benefit. Restating, rearranging, and analyzing your reading, in order to take notes from it, supplies greater benefit than simply recording by hand what you’re reading. Taking notes from the text requires a measure of recall and rehearsal, while making a record from which to further recall and rehearse. Reciting from the text, whether by free recall or by answering questions, may supply longer-term benefit. If the text doesn’t supply the questions, generate your own questions over the text, for even greater benefit. Making judgments and inferences from your recall can supply even greater benefit. Don’t just recall what you read but instead agree or disagree with it, and extend it into scenarios in which you would put it into use.
Myths
Reading comes with several myths that it may benefit you to correct. You may, for instance, have been taught not to move your lips and whisper or subvocalize the text as you read. Yet subvocalizing can aid comprehension, especially of complex or otherwise challenging text. Reading complex material requires extra attention to definition, detail, and relationships within the text. Rehearsing new terms, formulating phrases, and giving quiet voice to other thoughts can help you interpret and comprehend the text. Convention suggests that you focus on nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and active verbs when reading. But reading every word, including articles, prepositions, and conjunctions, may be critical to getting the correct meaning. Convention may urge speed reading, but comprehension generally instead requires slower reading, even word by word, along with rereading especially difficult passages. Reserve scanning for sections having no obvious relevance to your reading purpose.
Encoding
Ultimately, reading for learning requires some degree of preliminary encoding, not necessarily memorizing but instead being able to recall material in one’s own comprehension consistent with the text. Think of reading not as allowing text to pass before your eyes or briefly through your mind but instead as helping you to construct, refine, or extend knowledge structures, as durable patterns of thought on which you can draw for future use. Processing your reading through pause-and-rehearse, question-and-answer, evaluation, and note-taking techniques has the goal of establishing and enhancing those knowledge structures. Creating mnemonics, the first-letter memory aids already mentioned in a prior chapter, is one clear way of confirming that you are building those knowledge structures. Constructing two or three memorable mnemonics out of a reading, perhaps headlining the key elements or important factors of the text’s argument, or the necessary steps to a described routine, can give you the confidence that you have captured important substance from your reading. Don’t get lost in reading. Encode a memorable structure out of it. Give yourself some firm takeaways.
Digital
Instructional content is increasingly in digital rather than print form. Students could once expect to have a physical, hard-cover course text, perhaps supplemented by a soft-cover workbook or multiple paper handouts to tuck into physical folders or punch into notebooks. Increasingly, though, instructional programs are using electronic learning management systems. Those systems deliver instructional resources, linking students to digital texts, worksheets, slide shows, videos, practice quizzes, and other guided electronic instruction. Those systems also collect and analyze student uses and responses. Students today may thus read and respond entirely, primarily, or substantially online rather than using physical books. Reading online has a different character than reading physical texts. Indications are that the different character of digital text especially challenges weaker readers. If you have a choice, prefer physical texts for your reading. If you must use digital texts, don’t let their evanescent character diminish your engagement with them. Force yourself to process digital text in the same way you would process text printed on a physical page.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your reading skill? Which of the above techniques would most improve your reading skill? Name your purpose for your most recent reading. Can you see how articulating your reading purpose could improve your reading? Can you recall a recent instance when you were not ready to read, such that your attempt largely failed? How skilled are you at evaluating an author’s expertise, bias, interest, and perspective? Do you generally make a practice of confirming the organization of what you are reading before you begin? How well might learning the reading’s conclusion before you begin reading help you understand the reading’s point and argument? Do you use a reading’s headings and subheadings to guide you through the reading to sections and passages on which you’d prefer to focus? When reading for precise knowledge of the content, do you use any obvious memory techniques such as pausing, picturing, questioning, or rereading? As you read the next passages of this guide, monitor your processing for the following techniques: pausing, noting, rehearsing, rephrasing, elaborating, rereading, evaluating, extending, and applying.
Key Points
Reading is a primary skill for learning, closely correlated with success.
Discern and confirm your purpose for reading before you begin.
Ensure that you have the time, attention, and concentration to read.
Discern the author’s expertise and perspective before and as you read.
Discern the text’s organization before and as you read.
Discern the reading’s conclusion before you read the argument.
Use headings and subheadings to focus on relevant reading sections.
Repeat, rehearse, and elaborate to aid your memory as you read.
Building your reading processing skills builds other cognitive skills.
Taking notes and answering questions can enhance reading retention.
Subvocalization and reading slowly can aid comprehension.
Read to encode, enhance, and preserve knowledge structures.
Give digital text the same attention and engagement as print text.