(How to read "How to Read a Book" Part Two, Chapters 2, 3 and 4)
There are different levels of reading: the most basic is basic reading, which is better than basic reading. The more efficient one is inspection reading, the more in-depth reading is analytical reading, and the most systematic and complex one is thematic reading.
Being able to understand the meaning of words, the structure of sentences, and roughly understanding the content of articles is a reading method that we have been exposed to since our primary and junior high school education - from literacy, word recognition, To explain sentences and answer the main meaning of the article. Most people's reading ability or reading methods stop here. They may have no problem reading some short articles or news information, but they are unable to read complex and difficult books. So we need more advanced reading methods or techniques to help us read and understand.
There are two stages of inspection reading.
- Read the preface, table of contents, postscript, etc. to understand the structure of the book;
- Read the index that appears in the text to understand the keywords and key arguments;
- Read the introduction on the front and back covers;
- After completing the above steps, you will have a general understanding of the book. If you think it is worth continuing to read, pick out one or two from your own impressions that seem to be relevant. Look at the chapters related to the topic. If there are abstracts at the beginning or end of the chapter, read these abstracts carefully;
- The last step is to open the book casually and read it intermittently. Don’t read too much in a row. Look for these abstracts. Clues to the book's theme or ideas. Stay proactive and positive.
The benefits of skimming: understand the structure of the book, understand the main information and ideas in the book, and spend a short time discovering whether the book is worth reading in depth.
After the first stage, if you feel that this is a book worthy of in-depth reading, you should start the second stage of rough reading. This is also a very useful reading method for reading some difficult books:
Read it from beginning to end
Don’t stop to think or inquire when you encounter something you don’t understand, just pay attention to what you can For the understanding part, focus on what you can understand. When you read it for the second time, these understandable contents will help you understand the parts you didn't understand before - even if you don't read it a second time, it is better to already understand part of the content than to stop because you encounter difficulties and understand nothing.
The benefits of rough reading: it is the first necessary step to understand the content of the whole book, quickly understand the understandable content, and help understand difficult content.
Don’t slow down when you should be fast. Inspection reading only requires a small part of the reading, not all the content. The purpose is to read and understand a book within a certain period of time, so don’t read too slowly. And no matter how good a book is, there will always be insignificant gaps where you can read faster.
One way to improve your reading speed: use your hands to train your eyes. Use your fingers to move down the article line by line, forcing yourself to read at a speed that matches your hand movements. This reading speed can be two to three times faster than before.
Don’t go too fast when you should slow down. When facing some difficult content, read slowly to gain preliminary understanding.
It can be seen that when reading a book, inspection reading is not only much faster than basic reading, but also can grasp the key points of the book equally or even better, and further deepen reading comprehension. necessary steps. Inspectional reading is an important and necessary reading skill that we should use when reading.
Recall again that the essence of reading is an activity. If you want to read well, you must be active. The more active you are, the better. These actions will be discussed in the following chapters.