Have you ever asked yourself why you spend so much time in reading your book and yet still do not understand? Researches has been carried out to find out these but to discover that many read without knowing why they are reading but to fulfill all righteousness.
Below are some points that will help you to read with speed and comprehension:
- Read
with a purpose.
- Skim
first.
- Be
judicious in highlighting and note taking.
- Think
in pictures.
- Rehearse
as you go along.
- Rehearse
again soon.
1. Know Your Purpose
Everyone should have a purpose for their reading and think
about how that purpose is being fulfilled during the actual reading. The
advantage for remembering is that checking continuously for how the purpose is
being fulfilled helps the reader to stay on task, to focus on the more relevant
parts of the text, and to rehearse continuously as one reads. This also saves
time and effort because relevant items are most attended.
- to
understand a certain group of people, such as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.
- to
crystallize your political position, such as why a given government policy
should be opposed.
- to
develop an informed plan or proposal.
- to
satisfy a requirement of an academic course or other assigned reading.
2. Skim first:
Some reading tasks require no more than skimming. Proper
skimming includes putting an emphasis on the headings, pictures, graphs,
tables, and key paragraphs (which are usually at the beginning and the end).
Depending on the purpose, you should slow down and read carefully only the
parts that contribute to fulfilling the reading purpose.
3. Be judicious in highlighting and note taking:
Use a highlighter to mark a FEW key points to act as the
basis for mental pictures and reminder cues. Add key words in the margins if
you don’t find useful clues to highlight.
Almost all students use highlighter pens to identify key
parts of a text. But many students either highlight too much or highlight the
wrong things. They become so preoccupied in marking up the book that they don’t
pay enough attention to what they are reading. A better approach is to
highlight just a few key words on a page. If many pages don’t require
highlights, sticky tabs on pages with highlights can greatly speed a study
process for whole books.
4. Think in picture:
Moreover, pictures are much easier to memorize than words.
Those memory wizards who put on stage shows owe their success (as do card
counters in casinos) to use of gimmicks based on mental pictures. Ordinary
readers can use to good affect the practice of making mental images of the
meaning of text. The highlighted key words in text, for example, if used as a
starting point for mental pictures, then become very useful for memorization.
One only has to spot the key words and think of the associated mental images.
Sometimes it helps to make mental images of headings and sub-heads. Pictures
also become easier to remember when they are clustered into similar groups or
when they are chained together to tell a story.
Mental pictures are not the only way to facilitate memory
for what you read. I understand that actors use another approach for memorizing
their lines for a play, movie, or TV show. Actors “get into the part” and study
the meaning of the script in depth, which seems to produce memory automatically
for them. When the same script is memorized with mental images, it appears that
the text is being looked at from the outside, as something to be memorized.
Actors, on the other hand, appear to be looking at the same text from the
inside, as something to be experienced. The actors probe the deep meaning of
the text, which inevitably involves attending to the exact words. For example,
they seem to explore why their character would use a given set of words to
express a particular thought. This is still a process of association, except
that actors are associating words with real meaning and context as opposed to
contrived visual image meaning and context.
5. Rehearse as you go along:
Read in short segments (a few paragraphs to a few pages,
depending on content density), all the while thinking about and paraphrasing the
meaning of what is written.
To rehearse what you are memorizing, see how many of the
mental pictures you can reconstruct. Use headings and highlighted words if
needed to help you reinforce the mental pictures. Rehearse the mental pictures
every day or so for the first few days after reading.
6. Rehearse after you must have finished reading:
At the reading session end, rehearse what you learned right
away. Avoid distractions and multi-tasking because they interfere with the
consolidation processes that enable longer-term memory. Answer again the
questions about content mentioned in the “Rehearse As You Go Along” section.
Think about and rehearse what you read at least twice later
that day. Rehearse again at last once for the next 2-3 days.
