Transcription
Take a look at this sentence. The spy saw the cop with the binoculars. Question, who has the binoculars? The spy or the cop?
Now, the first time I read this sentence, I read it as the spy having the binoculars. But if you look at it carefully, it could just as easily be the cop. This sentence kind of hints at one of the biggest misconceptions about reading comprehension and that is that the meaning of the sentence or the passage is embedded in the text just waiting for the reader to pull it out.
What do you imagine when you read this sentence? John placed the glass on the table and pushed it toward the edge. Now, you might be thinking about the glass. You know what it looked like? Is it clear? Is it opaque? Uh is it sitting upright? Is there water or something else in the glass? Maybe you imagine that when John pushed the glass, he used his hand. The thing is, none of those details are in the text itself, but our mind imagines them anyway because it isn't just decoding words and extracting meaning. It's actively constructing a mental picture of the situation that the text describes. And that process usually depends on a few things happening at the same time.
Now, I already did a video on schema and comprehension. Uh, but if you haven't seen that one, schema is the mental model that we have about the world. You know, the different environments or the different situations that we encounter, you know, how they normally work. So, for example, we all have a mental model about how spies might behave or a mental model about what binoculars are used for. And so we use this information to fill in gaps that aren't yet clear to us just by reading the words and the sentences on the page.
Now, another way that our minds create meaning is by making predictions. Take a look at this sentence for example. The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi. So, at first it sounds like there's something wrong with this sentence, like maybe I left out a word or I mistyped something. But it is actually grammatical. The problem is just that our brains are predicting the wrong structure. We're automatically grouping cotton clothing together because this is a natural calocation. And so we assume that clothing is the subject of the sentence. But the subject is actually cotton and clothing is made of is a relative clause describing that cotton. So the correct way to read this is the cotton meaning the specific cotton the clothing is made of grows in Mississippi. Linguists call these kind of sentences garden path sentences because they initially lead you down the wrong path of interpretation. And when we realize this when we realize we've made a mistake we have to go back reinterpret the sentence and sort of rebuild everything from scratch.
There's another famous example that's often used. The old man the boats. Again, this sentence looks like I left something out, but the word man here is being used as a verb, not a noun. So, what the sentence really means is elderly people man or operate the boats.
Another way that our minds create meaning is through context. Now, on its own, the original sentence is ambiguous, but if we added a sentence before it, something like, "The spy had been watching the harbor all morning," it makes it very likely that it's the spy who has the binoculars. However, if the previous sentence instead said, "The cop lifted his binoculars and scanned the crowd," then in this case, it's more likely that it's the cop who has the binoculars.
Now, think about the context in a larger sense. For example, if you read the sentence, "He walked down to the bank." Now, if the passage is about money or business, then you'd probably picture a regular bank where, you know, you put your money. But if the passage is about fishing or a river, then you're probably going to be thinking about the edge of the water. So, this exact same sentence can produce two completely different meanings depending on the situation that the text is describing.
But even after the context helps narrow things down, there are still gaps. And to fill in those gaps, we use inferences to make guesses about what the text doesn't explicitly say. If I said, for example, John dropped the glass. A moment later, the floor was covered in water, probably everyone would automatically assume that the glass broke and then the water spilled on the floor. But the text never actually says this. We infer that the glass broke or shattered and that the water spilled out and that's why the floor is wet. Although we can't be 100% certain, our brains immediately construct the most plausible explanation.
Now, all of the examples that we've gone through so far, they all point to this idea that even in simple sentences, meaning isn't coming directly from the words, at least not completely. It's true, you know, things like vocabulary and grammar, they play a part as well, but it's mostly on the level of limiting what interpretations are possible. They kind of set the stage, so to speak. But much of the meaning is coming from what you already bring to the text, your expectations or your sense of what's likely or at least what's plausible. And of course, when that background is strong, comprehension feels almost automatic. In fact, you don't even notice the work that your brain is doing because everything just kind of makes sense.
But when that knowledge or experience isn't there, this is where reading can start to get difficult because you're not just trying to overcome a single ambiguous sentence or small misunderstandings that crop up every once in a while. The difficulty is in every paragraph, every page. And this is one of the main reasons why certain books seem so hard to get through.
Now, there's a lot of advice out there. People will say, you know, if you want to read difficult books, then you have to develop really strong reading skills or maybe you have to learn how to highlight or you need some kind of note takingaking strategy or notetaking system, something along these lines. Now, I don't discount the value of using these kinds of strategies. They are useful in a in a general sense. And if nothing else, they can help you stay organized whenever you're reading. But they don't actually solve one of the biggest problems that people run into whenever they're confronted with a book that's really challenging.
To see what I mean, take a look at this paragraph about playing poker. Under the gun raises to three big blinds. The cutoff calls the button three bets to 12. Now I can read and understand every word in that paragraph. The sentences are short and the grammar is very simple and I already know that it's about poker. So, I've already activated the relevant schema, but none of that helps. I still have no idea what this paragraph is saying. And this is very similar to what happens when we open a difficult book on say philosophy or even something like literary criticism. No matter how experienced you might be as a reader or how good your notes might be, some books are still going to be difficult if you don't have the domain specific knowledge in that subject area.
So when people try to read a really challenging book, a lot of them might give up easily because they might think, "Oh, well, I'm not smart enough." Or they might think, "Oh, well, I'm not very good at reading or something along these lines." when in reality all they really need to do is learn more about that subject. And I guess that's really the point when it comes down to it. When people talk about reading, they often make it sound like meaning is just sitting there in the words in the sentences and it's the reader's job to extract it or pull it out. And that's not really what's happening. When we read, we are constantly interpreting. We're predicting. We're filling in gaps. We're revising our understanding and we're pulling in whatever background knowledge is available. The text provides the clues, but the reader constructs the meaning.