This is the most effective way to learn

Chapter 54 Mastering the Psychology of Reading

psychology in reading
Reading always requires whole-hearted cooperation, so the process of reading is a process of mental activity.The effect of reading depends not only on the reading strategy, on the reader's knowledge level and thinking ability, but also on the reader's reading needs, motivation, interest, will, emotion and experience.The reading process is a process in which various factors interact.Positive psychological factors can promote the improvement of reading effect, but negative psychological factors often become the internal obstacles of reading.Therefore, it is necessary for us to understand some psychological knowledge of reading and consciously grasp our own reading mood in order to truly achieve effective reading.

reading desires and needs

Why are some people willing to learn and want to learn?Why are some people unwilling to learn or even disgusted with learning?This is because the former has the inner desire and need to learn a certain subject knowledge, while the latter does not.According to Abraham Maslow's point of view, human needs can be divided into five categories: physiological, safety, love, respect and self-actualization needs.

Physiological needs include things like food, clothing, and shelter that are necessary for our survival.

Security needs refer to a feeling that the basic survival needs can be sure to be satisfied in the future.Security needs are primarily economic, but they also adjoin or overlap with our emotional security needs.

The word "love" as used here is, in essence, a feeling of emotional security.It refers to the need for affection and attachment.It includes the feeling that someone cares and values ​​me for my sake.

Respect refers to a need for a person to feel that he is important, valuable, valued, respected, and admired by others.It implies a need for attention, recognition, status, prestige, or something like that.

Self-actualization refers to a person's pursuit of personal growth or perfect development, and refers to the need for a person to give full play to his intelligence, discover his potential, and enable himself to become a character.Self-actualization implies people's need for self-expression, aesthetic experience and appreciation, and people's need to pursue knowledge, satisfy their own curiosity, and understand themselves, others, and the world around them.

Most of people's behaviors, including reading, satisfy one or more of these five needs.As long as it helps to meet these needs, it will bring reinforcement to reading.For example, when a man is told at a medical examination that he has hepatitis, he has an immediate need to care for his own health, and therefore he can't wait to get some medical books, even if they are full of esoteric terms. And boring figures, he will read page by page with great interest.Even in just a few days, various issues related to hepatitis were clarified.Of course, people read far more widely than they read out of immediate necessity of one kind or another.Before we read a book or material, we must first clarify the purpose and significance of reading, which will generate a strong desire and need for reading, and even "gnaw" the book thoroughly, but still feel unsatisfactory.

Motivation and interest in reading

If we feel that reading is boring, or that reading is a matter of will to restrain, then we should ask ourselves, why do we want to read this book?What is your motivation for reading?Is the motivation strong?
As long as we ask ourselves, we will find that there are often motives for reading, but the various motives are different in nature.

For example, the reason why some books should be read carefully is because of "examination", they are "must read" books for promotion and postgraduate entrance examination; some books are hard to read because of difficulties encountered in work; Some books are because the senior scholars said that "this is a must-read book for scholars"; there are other books because it attracts me and arouses the enthusiasm for exploring the true meaning of life... If you put your various If the motives are listed, we will suddenly find the crux of the problem that prevents us from improving our reading effect.

Reading motivation can generally be divided into two categories.One is "extrinsic motivation", that is to say, readers have the desire to read a certain book under external pressure.Such as studying for exams, competitions, and avoiding blame, this is mostly the case.Extrinsic motivation can often create an urgent need to read.The other type is "intrinsic motivation", which refers to the motivation of readers to read due to their own pursuit, aesthetic taste, and thirst for knowledge without obvious pressure. What readers feel is the inner pressure. pressure.

The subject of reading is the individual, which is an independent activity of human eyes, brain, mouth, and hands. All social motivations and external motivations must be transformed into the motivation of the reader in order to play a practical role in the reading process. External needs should be transformed into readers' own needs.

Deep reading motivation is determined by world outlook, learning purpose, life value orientation and knowledge level.Temporary reading only needs a momentary motivation, recreational reading only needs a general motivation, and as pioneering and difficult reading, long-term and persistent reading requires a great motivation.The influence of the external society on the individual, that is to say, the concern for the future of mankind, the love for the motherland and the people, generally manifests itself in the desire to read "from the bottom of the heart".If thinkers have no books to read around them one day, they will feel an indescribable sense of loneliness and emptiness.Only such a desire to read can make reading a pleasure.This is just as Montesquieu said: liking to read is equivalent to exchanging the lonely hours of life for moments of great enjoyment.For those who have a weak desire to read, the difficulty of the reading material will cause the loss of interest in reading; but for those who have a strong desire to read, as long as the appetite is right, the more difficult the reading material, the more enjoyable the reading will be.This motive is deep, and the reader himself is not always aware of it.

In addition to the strong restriction of the reader's life goals on this deep reading motivation, from the perspective of reading itself, what factors does this deep reading motivation depend on?Generally speaking, there are the following points:
Readers' thinking quality and language ability.Language ability includes the ability to perceive characters and symbols, and the ability to use language to think and express.People with higher language ability spend less energy on understanding text symbols when reading, and have less obstacles to reading.High language ability is actually quick thinking, so at the beginning of reading, you can quickly accept the stimulation of text symbols, create a reading mood, and arouse the desire to read.Even if you get a book that you are not very interested in at first, but you read a short paragraph after opening the book, you will gain an internal drive to read because of your strong language skills, and you will have the desire to continue reading.Therefore, we must solidly improve our thinking quality and language ability.

Reading habits and experience.The reading habit enables readers to quickly complete the process of transferring from other activities to reading activities. Reading is a kind of thinking.Therefore, at the beginning of reading, the psychology is often not adapted, and the phenomenon of "failure to read" occurs.This stage of psychological discomfort lasts longer for people who do not have the habit of reading.For those who have become a habit of reading, their mentality changes quickly. When they pick up a book, their eyes, brain, and heart enter a "ready" state, and they can quickly taste it after reading a few lines.Reading experience plays the same role.People who have read a lot of books can quickly adjust their attention to reading.Psychological research proves that habit and experience are related to the internal drive of the behavior.To stimulate deep reading motivation, one must cultivate one's own reading habits, so that reading becomes a natural thing, thereby improving the reading effect.

The reader's "self-awareness".In reading, what kind of self-awareness the reader has will determine what kind of reading effect he will get.The internal drive generated by readers who call themselves "polymaths" and "scholars" is different from those who call themselves "read casually".This problem, which has a great influence on the reading effect, accompanies the psychological process of reading very covertly, and is generally not noticed by us.Some college students, when they are in the first year of college, have the consciousness of specializing in a certain subject prematurely, and as a result, they quickly lose the motivation to read other must-read books, forming a one-sided knowledge structure.There are also those who believe that they are "people who are not good at reading", and with this kind of reading awareness, they restrain themselves.If you read less, read slowly, or read poorly, you think it is in line with your actual situation, which seriously hinders your motivation to read more and read faster.In reading, you should adopt the attitude of "knowing everything" and "there is no book I can't read", which will greatly stimulate the motivation to read books.

(End of this chapter)