Thoughts on Reading Well: Getting the Right Tools
We
often do not think about what it means to read well. In an efficiency- and
productivity-conscious world such as ours, we tend to think that reading is one
skill acquired in grade school and high school, and that reading well means
reading quickly. If one can read
100 pages and understand what is said in an hour, it would be better to be able
to do that in a half-hour, or so the thinking goes.
What
such an approach misses is that there are various reading strategies that apply
to different kinds of texts, and students often struggle with particularly rich
texts, not because they aren’t smart enough to get what they are saying,
but rather because they’re not using the right reading strategy. Reading strategies are like tools; if
you can’t unscrew a Philips-head with a flat bit, that has nothing
whatsoever to do with your wrist-strength.
It’s that you lack the proper tool. And so it is with reading.
So
what are some different reading strategies?
Critical reading requires not only for you to understand what
information was presented to you, but what the point of telling you all this
is. In other words, in critical
reading, you are always involved in a dialogue with the text. Not just what is
said, but how it is said, and how this bit of text relates to what precedes it. Critical
reading is about making connections, about calling into question, about tracing
the lines of argument and detecting both brilliant insights and hidden
mistakes. It often requires
multiple readings of the same text, because you’ll miss things on one
pass that you’ll see on a second run.
Critical reading usually requires more than your eyes. Most good readers I know read with a
pencil – and maybe even a ruler – in hand. Having pencil and ruler allows you to
make notes of important passages, but it also allows a more participatory mode
of reading, a kind of sustained attention to and interaction with the
book. When I was an upper-level
undergraduate and then graduate student, I noticed that many of my mentors had
writing on the inside covers, flyleaves, and back pages of their books. What these readers did, and what I do
today when I am engaged in real critical reading, is take notes – roughly
an outline, with page numbers noted. I note significant points, the major steps
of argument, and my own critical questions in these places. This practice has at least two
advantages. One, it forces me to try to discern and describe the basic
structure of the argument in what I’m reading. I forget too easily how
the argument moves, step by step, since I tend to get wrapped up in the
conclusion. Writing in this way
forces me to slow down and see if I really understand what I am reading. The second advantage is that, if I ever
return to the book – at the end of the semester, or even years
later—I have before my eyes a kind of personal Spark Notes to my own reading of the text (note, sometimes if I return to a text,
I see things very differently the first time around. So the Spark Notes analogy
isn’t quite right.)
Lastly, Critical reading is exhausting. I cannot do serious critical reading for
more than 2-3 hours a day, and that’s with a lot of practice at it. But
for some this kind of reading is ultimately the most fun, since it allows you
to get your whole mind involved, not just the information-processor.
When I was an undergraduate, I discovered (really much to my own
surprise) that it was really useful for me to pick something light and
diversionary to read at really busy times – midterms, exam week,
etc. I don’t know exactly why
this helps, but my theory is that studying for exams and writing papers gets my
mind cranked up, so that I find it difficult to relax without thinking about
the subject I am studying – even TV doesn’t quite do it. But light
reading can really put my mind in a different frame, occupying it in another
direction. And after all, you can only study so much in a day. Just a thought for you
to consider.
·
First, don’t read too much. Contemplative reading is about what the
Benedictine monks used to call ruminatio, chewing
on little bits to get all the juice out. There’s no hurrying
contemplative reading.
·
Second, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Reading the same thing over and over
again can’t always give you more information, but it has an effect on
you. It will become part of the
‘furniture of your mind’ that way, and it will affect other things
you see and do.
·
Lastly, try memorizing a favorite passage. In the ancient and
medieval world, memorization was an essential part of reading. (If you want to
see an interesting book on this theme, check out Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo
Ricci) This is a skill that we have lost entirely. In one sense, we
don’t need to memorize, because books are cheap and the internet is even
cheaper. But that’s only in the sense of information. Memorizing
something helps reading be more than information and become formation.
It’s
important to see that none of these reading strategies are better or worse than
any other. It’s not a
question of good or bad reading, it’s a question
of fitting the skill to the task at hand. And it’s not always a question
of applying only one skill to a particular text. For example, reading well for
Theology 1050 will require having tools 1, 2, and 3 ready to hand, and it will
require learning how to switch between them. For example, reading St.
Augustine’s Exposition on Psalm 31 will be deadly and relatively useless
if you try to read it in the Textbook Reading mode. But if you make a first pass through
Synoptic reading, you may be able to identify short passages that you can
really read carefully in Critical Reading mode. On the other hand, if you pick up White
Noise, I think you’ll find that much of it will read like Diversionary
reading, but you’ve got to listen with a ‘third ear’ for
things that might require more attention and time. Reading Robert Barron, And Now I See, will be a time when good
Textbook Reading will be useful, but again, it should trip a wire in your brain
every now and then that will bring you back to a passage for Critical Reading.
Last example: Reading Genesis 1-4
or the Gospel of Mark, we will stick with a relatively short passage of text
for a very long time. This is when
repetition will really help you. I suggest, e.g., that you re-read Genesis 1-4
at least three times in the course of our study of it. For some of you, this may even be
contemplative reading, whether or not you’re a Christian, and
you’ll be surprised at the insights that contemplative reading can
sometimes generate. But at the very least, careful, attentive reading, not just
to what is said, but to what is not said, and to the way things are said, will
be important.
The
biggest difference I have seen in a decade of teaching between a student who
enjoys her work and one who just gets it done is in the ability to make use of
different reading strategies. If
you only read in Textbook mode, you’ll go too slowly and only get half of
what most professors are looking for in an A student. If you try to read everything critically
or contemplatively, you’ll collapse from exhaustion and never make it
through the week’s assignments.
But if you make use of all these tools in the proper measure, you’ll
find that you work more efficiently, with more fun, and more real learning.
© Copyright Kevin L. Hughes, 2005