This is the most effective way to learn

Chapter 53: Tips for Improving Your Reading

Reading cannot be improved by mechanical methods such as increasing the speed of turning pages and artificially forcing eye movements, there is no magic in this method.The magic happens only when you work on your reading skills.

intonation method
Silent reading is part of the reading and comprehension process and can be used for speed reading with a high level of comprehension.

The most effective use of silent recitation is through intonation.Intonation refers to whether a sentence is read with a rising or falling intonation.In other words, reading intonation is reading with expression.Intonation naturally organizes individual words into meaningful "sentences".

To use this method, let the eye move quickly across the page as usual.Don't have to make any noise, but let the thoughts swirl around each line, with a tone of rhythm that your "inner ear" can hear.This is reading with expression.In doing so, important rhythms, accents, forte and pauses that were lost when the words were put into written form are brought back.

To make reading silently a regular habit, start by reading aloud in your own room.Take 10 to 20 minutes to finish reading a chapter in the novel.Say it with an exaggerated expression, like reciting lines from a play.In this way, some language patterns of your own will be established in your mind, and it will be easier to "hear" them when you read silently.

lexical approach
Perhaps there is no surer and more reliable way to permanently improve reading than the accumulation of a rich and precise vocabulary.

Accurate vocabulary requires us to learn each word as a concept, knowing the origin of the word, its main meaning, several secondary meanings, some of its synonyms and their subtle differences, and some of its antonyms.Therefore, when encountering this word in reading, a large number of vocabulary will flash in front of us, inspiring us to understand the sentence, paragraph and the thoughts the author wants to convey.

background method
Reading a few good books will improve our reading to a great extent.The first reason for saying this is because by doing so, you will get a lot of opportunities to practice, and more importantly, you can accumulate a large number of concepts, ideas, events and names, which will play a role in our future reading. Surprisingly often.

The eminent psychologist David Osbell points out that a key prerequisite for reading is background knowledge we already have.What Osbell means is that if you are to understand what you read, you must use what you already know (ie, the context) to understand it.The so-called background is not born with, but accumulated through direct and indirect experiences. Of course, indirect experiences are obtained through listening, watching movies or reading books.

Authors often quote famous works, famous quotes or well-known events in their books.In many cases, we can understand the story without knowing the source.But sometimes, a metaphor can also be critical, and without this background knowledge, you have to look up its meaning.To illustrate this point, let's take as an example a passage from Robert Louis Stevenson:

And most long ago I was able to lay by my lantern in content, for If I found the honest man.

This sentence consists of 20 very simple words, many of which have only two or three letters.One of them is decisive for understanding the sentence.As an experiment, before reading the following passage, go back and see if you can find the key word.

The two most frequently found words in this sentence are honest (honest) and content (satisfactory).Yes, both are beautiful words, but neither is a keyword.That keyword should be lantern (lamp).Of course, Stevenson wasn't referring to an ordinary lamp.Diogenes was a Greek philosopher and critic in the 4th century BC.He walked the streets of Athens in broad daylight holding a lighted lamp, staring into the faces of passers-by, and said he was looking for honest men.He is exaggerating to show that honest men are hard to find even in broad daylight with a lighted lamp.

It is clear that the reader cannot fully understand Stevenson's sentence without knowing the story of Diogenes.And this is just one of thousands of examples.It is impossible for us to store every fact, myth, story, and poem in our background knowledge base, but we can increase its capacity by reading, so that reading can receive better results.

To read great works, it is through these books that the wisdom of the predecessors is passed on to future generations.They can offer people the opportunity to "talk" to princes, kings, philosophers, travelers, playwrights, scientists, artists, and novelists.Start with the books and subjects you are interested in. Don't worry if your interests are narrow. Once you start reading, your interests will naturally expand.

The Gibbon Method: Big Memories
The great British historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, often used the technique of "great memory."This technique simply refers to the organized and conscientious use of people's general background knowledge.

Before starting to read a new book or write on a certain topic, Gibbon often spent hours alone in his study, or took long walks alone to recall all the knowledge he had on the topic in his head.As he ponders the main idea, he is constantly amazed at how many other thoughts and fragments of thought he cannot dig into.

The Gibbon method is extremely successful because it relies on some natural learning principles:

Bring past ideas to the forefront in your mind for application;
Past thoughts can serve as magnetic centers for attracting new ideas and new information;

This method of recall allows one to focus one's thoughts.

paragraph method
In order to better understand the content of the text, you can pause after reading each paragraph and summarize the content of the paragraph into one sentence.To learn to summarize and compress, you must know three main sentence patterns: namely, paragraph topic explanatory sentence, argument sentence and conclusion sentence.

A paragraph topic descriptive sentence that clearly states the topic (or part of a topic) that the paragraph will discuss.Although this topic sentence can appear anywhere in the paragraph, it is usually the first sentence of the paragraph, and there are good reasons for doing so, that is, the author can have a center when writing and the reader can read.Therefore, if you find a paragraph topic statement, draw it immediately, because it is not only eye-catching now, but also very eye-catching in future review.

Most expository paragraphs consist of argumentative sentences that explain and substantiate the topic.These sentences describe facts, reasons, examples, definitions, comparisons, contrasts, and other pertinent details.These sentences are the most important because it is these sentences that persuade the reader to accept the author's ideas.

The last sentence of each paragraph in the text may be the concluding sentence.Introductory sentences used to summarize the discussion, emphasize key points, and restate the whole or part of the subject, thus ending the paragraph.

Of course, the passage you read is part of a longer work, a chapter in a textbook, a section in a chapter, or an article in a newspaper or magazine.This relatively long work includes three types of paragraphs, in addition to the introduction and discussion of new information.

(1) Introductory paragraph.This kind of paragraph can inform in advance: the main idea of ​​​​the chapter or section; the breadth and limit of what is said; how the topic is developed;

(2) The turning point.Such paragraphs are usually very short, and their only function is to connect what has been read with what is to be read below, that is, to connect the preceding and the following.

(3) Summary paragraph.This kind of paragraph is used to briefly restate the main idea of ​​this paragraph or section, and the author can also draw some conclusions based on the main idea of ​​the chapter.

All three forms should be reminded: the introductory paragraph indicates what will be said; the turning paragraph indicates that a new topic is about to be discussed; the summary paragraph indicates the central idea of ​​the content of the paragraph.

structural form method

The secret to productive reading is thinking.We have to think about the words we read and the thoughts those words represent.This sounds simple, but it's not.The problem is: when we read, our minds are often out of focus.We cannot think about what we are reading when we are thinking about something else.

One way to focus our minds while reading is to see and recognize the structural forms used by the author.In this way, you will think together with the author.For example, it will recognize that the passage being read is organized in chronological order.You will say to yourself: "I know what she is writing, and she is describing the main events that happened during the Great Depression by year." with it.

one page at a time method

Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859) was a British statesman, historian, essayist and poet.After the publication of his greatest work, "History of England", the sales volume surpassed all other books and was second only to "Bible".

Macaulay started reading adult books when he was 3 years old.But after reading a shelf after a shelf of books, he suddenly found that he had spent so much energy without gaining much knowledge.

He could read every word of the authors and seemed to understand what they were trying to say, but later he could not generalize the ideas in the books, nor could he even use general terms to describe what the authors wrote.

He described the solution to this problem as follows:
When I read to the bottom of each page, I always allow myself to stop and talk about what is written on that page.At first I always had to read it three or four times to stabilize my thoughts.But I forced myself to follow this rule.Until now, when I finish reading a page, I can almost recite it from beginning to end.

There is at least something very basic, honest and refreshing about Macaulay's approach, no complicated formulas, just at the end of each page, ask yourself: "Simply put, what did the author say on this page ?”

What has worked for Lord Macaulay has worked for us as well.This keeps us focused, and it teaches us to keep thinking while we read.Pausing to briefly review each time also strengthens our memory.

daniel webster method

Daniel Webster has his own method of concentration: Before reading a book, he looks through the table of contents, reads the preface, and turns the pages.Then make a few tables like this:
Questions he expected the book to answer;

the knowledge he expects to gain from reading;
Where this book will lead him.

These three tables guide him through the book and keep his concentration sharp.

keyword method

The most helpful words in reading are prepositions and conjunctions, which lead us into the author's train of thought.For example, the word "furthermore" means: "Go on!" "However" means: "The latter part needs attention."

Master the above vocabulary or phrases and you'll be a better reader in no time.

skimming method
Both students and business executives agree that a widely used form of reading is skimming.Skimming includes a variety of speed uses, from speed reading all the way to lookup, which is hardly called reading.So, whether to use fast reading or search or something in between depends on the freedom of the individual.The method of skimming must be adapted to the purpose of the individual, otherwise, it is a waste of time.

Here are five purposes of skimming and how to do each.

(1) Finding a needle in a haystack.If you want to find the information (such as name, date, word or phrase) provided in a textbook or an article, you can use the skimming search method, because you don't need to understand when you are looking for it, but just identify it. find out.In order to ensure that your eyes do not miss the word or fact you are looking for, pay attention and focus on finding the word or fact as you browse from page to page.In this way, it will be found in the ocean of words.

Once you have found this specific word or fact, it is best to pause and read the sentences and paragraphs around it, using the context to see if you have found the word or fact you are looking for.

When we use the search method, if time is short, then we should not be tempted to read the entire article, because our subconscious may want to postpone learning.If you really have time, you might as well satisfy your curiosity and finish reading the article. This may not be helpful for the next exam, but the knowledge you gain will be useful and enrich your general knowledge.

(2) Look for clues.We want to find a specific piece of information, but we don't know which words it will appear in, then you have to use a slower search method.In this case, there is no way to predict the exact words, so you have to pay attention to clues, and clues can appear in various ways.

(3) Essentials.Sometimes you can get the gist of a book or an article by skimming.We can use this method to find out whether a book is relevant to the subject of research.To get the hang of it, read the Introduction and Abstract quickly, and also look at some passages that indicate the main expository sentences that already contain important arguments.

This skimming method will help us when we are preparing to write a term paper.After checking the catalog card in the reference room and making a list of books that seem to be related to your topic, take a look at these books, eliminate some books that are not related to your topic, and keep books that are related to your topic books.Obviously, if you want to read all the books on the list, you have to look at the table of contents, or choose a chapter whose title is related to the topic of your thesis, and skim it to get the main idea of ​​​​the chapter.

(4) Make a general understanding of a chapter in the textbook.Doing so can achieve understanding of the text to varying degrees.In general, this type of skimming requires an understanding of caption headings, subheadings, and several parts of a paragraph to know where important concepts will be addressed.Such skimming allows us to figure out the relative importance of each part in the whole.

(5) Skim reading for review.The method of skimming can also be used for reviewing for exams or reciting.After skimming the content that has been read, studied, and taken notes before, in order to be more effective, you should stop from time to time and try to recite the important concepts of each chapter, or summarize the content of a chapter.

After reading a chapter in the textbook, it is like a jigsaw puzzle that has been pieced together. You must make a general observation of the whole chapter and understand it as a whole.

For skimming to be an effective tool, it must be practiced, remembering to adapt the method to one's own purposes.Skimming saves time for our studies as well as for future specialized work.

(End of this chapter)