Transcription
Hi! Brian Dempsey here, and I just wanted to make a quick video to address a couple things that came up in a discussion on Facebook about reading and becoming a better reader.
And so, as we kinda went through this thread online, we were sharing some tips and ideas about how to improve our reading comprehension. And so I thought I would share a few things that I do, and maybe this will be a help to you.
Number one: when you read a book, and by the way we will title this video "10 tips to improve your reading comprehension," and so number one is from Benjamin Franklin himself. What he said was, "Never read a book without a pen in hand." And so, I've taken that to heart. I hardly walk to a mailbox without having a book and a pen. And so, if you have a pen in your hand, no matter what you're reading, you have the opportunity to underline, highlight... personally I like to scribble, circle, argue with the author. If you read the columns in my book, sometimes I write, "Well, that's a great point," or "You're a blooming idiot," or whatever. But I really interact with the author as I write in the book. And some people, I know it makes their skin crawl to just think of writing in a book, but if you want to improve your reading comprehension, the very first thing that I would do is take Benjamin Franklin's advice and never read a book without a pen in your hand.
Another thing we talk about regarding reading comprehension—number two—is read a whole paragraph or a whole section before you go to highlight or underline something. I know sometimes I can get ahead of myself. Then I'll be reading through a book, and most of the kinds of books that I read are not novels; they're nonfiction books. And so, they're a little bit more uh, technical or unit 4 study, so long. So sometimes we will begin reading, and the very first line that you see that's interesting, you want to highlight that. And what I found is, if you read the entire paragraph first, a lot of times there may be a summary statement, or there may be uh, a little better information for you to highlight down in the paragraph, rather than just uh, breaking up your train of thought. So you may want to read a whole section first and then go back and find what you want to highlight, and I think that'll help with your reading comprehension.
Another thing I do—in fact, I do it a lot—is I read out loud. And if you read out loud, you will read more slowly than if you read silently. But there are times where, by reading out loud, by reading with inflection, you're able to have more senses engaged in what you're reading. So you're not just saying it, but you're also uh, hearing what you're reading, and that simply helps with reading comprehension as well. And by the way, I read a study just today about reading out loud, and the study gave some great insights. One of the things that it mentioned was: if people read a list—you know, a list of items—and one of those items was different than the rest—maybe there was a list of 10 things, and it was ten times birds and one was a sport—people tend to remember the sport, and they would forget the other nine. And so what it shows is, those things that stand out, those things that are somehow different, tend to make a more lasting impression in our brain. So a lot of times what I'll do is, if I'm reading and I come across a paragraph that's just a really solid something I really want to get, I'll stop and read that out loud, and it really helps to set it apart in my thinking. So uh, so there are times where you can read out loud.
So: never read a book without a pen in your hand; read a whole paragraph per section before you go through and highlight or underline; at times read out loud; other times read silently; and simply check. As you see something that stands out, you see something interesting, simply check in the margin. That way you can keep reading; this gives you the big picture of a book, and then you can go back through and look and pay attention later to some other things that you checked. But that will help improve your comprehension.
This next one, I think, is uh, something a lot of people just don't do. When you're reading to study, when you're reading something that you really want to comprehend—it's not just enjoyment—something that I do uh, often—in fact, it probably makes you look pretty silly for somebody looking in my office, or maybe I'm driving down the road—but if I read something, I'll stop and read the paragraph, read the section, and I'll go through it in my mind, and sometimes I'll even talk through it out loud as if I'm explaining what I've read to someone. If you can formulate your thinking and be able to communicate that to someone else, then it's just going to increase your comprehension. And if you do that throughout the book, if you do that throughout your study, it's going to help significantly. So: never read a book without a pen in your hand; read the whole paragraph first; at times read out loud; other times read silently; and simply check things that are important; explain what you read.
And then, this comes from a chapter in a book that I'm going to recommend here just a moment, but I learned—from this book—when we were talking about reading comprehension, to recognize that it's okay not to read the entire book. In fact, there are lots of books that I buy that I skim through the table of contents; I look at the things that are going to be important to me, especially if it's a compilation, and then I pick and choose the sections of the book that I'm going to read. And it took me awhile to not feel guilty about not reading the whole book and only reading parts, but by doing that, by being more selective, I was able to benefit much more than if I simply labored through some things that presented information that, at the time, I just wasn't interested in. So learn to pay attention to the table of contents and really pick out the areas that you want to read.
Also, something that I tend to do is pay attention to summary words. Summary words are things like "therefore," or "as a result," or "in conclusion," and make sure that, when you see that, you're able, in your mind, to know what his argument was—what the author's argument was—before he got to a summary. Because if you see a summary word and you don't understand the previous argument, then you're not really comprehending much. I usually mark those summary words; I'll underline them, and I'll go back and make sure that I know what the points are that are leading up to the author's conclusion. And sometimes I find that, you know, he's made some kind of logical fallacy, and really the points that he's brought forth can lead to other conclusions, or maybe it's simply not conclusive.
Also, something that I would encourage you to do is: use highlighters or circle and underline key phrases in a book. I do that. Here's an example of a book that I read just this past week, and you can see—boy, I highlight! And then, you know, I was reading, and this particular book is on pluralism, and so I'll write—here's the word "tolerance"—and then I will underline the key phrases or the key words within a sentence, and that really helps to make it stand out. It also helps when I highlight and underline. When I finish a book, before I simply put it down to move on to the next thing, I typically pick it back up and go page by page, just look back through it, and I will read what I've highlighted. I just don't understand folks who can read a book and they don't mark in it, they don't write in it, and then, you know, maybe, but one thing that really stood out is simply lost in there—a two or three or four hundred-page book—and I can't open it up and go back and find that. And so I would encourage you: underline and pen.
Also, when it comes to reading comprehension, mark words that you don't know. This is something that is one way to help increase your vocabulary. I recently read a just absolutely outstanding book called "Professor and a Madman," and if you can see the subtitle here, the subtitle is, "A tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary." So it is a book about the making of the dictionary. So I wasn't too surprised when there were 35 or 40 words in the first, you know, however many chapters of this book that I didn't know, but I went through and circled every single solitary word I didn't know. And when I was done, because this is not only Kindle, I simply went to the dictionary—not common—spent a little bit uh, and looked up some of these words and have added a couple to my vocabulary. A few were a little archaic, bad, but anyway, fantastic thing to do: circle words that you don't know.
Finally, the last tip is: read this book, "How to Read a Book," by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. Absolutely outstanding! One of the things that this does is it helps you uh, to be able to read complex works and to compare them; it gives tips about X-raying a book and kind of understanding the author's purpose and goal, and not being able to evaluate a book to see if it's something that you want to read to begin with. So, let's review, no, not intensely—real quick, then. Number one, throughout: never read a book without a pen in your hand. Number two: read a whole paragraph before you go through and highlight or underline anything, and that way you get the bigger context, and sometimes you can find the conclusions. At times, when you need to, read out loud; you read more slowly, but it will help you to remember that as you engage your senses. Also, read silently; and as you read silently, simply use a pencil and just check uh, key paragraphs you want to go back and read later. Explain what you read. Learn to X-ray a book and realize that you don't have to read every single chapter. Pay attention to summary words—"therefore," "as a result," "in conclusion." Circle and underline key words and phrases in a sentence or in a paragraph. Um, mark words that you don't know and look them up. Again, if you have to take it—is double-clicked and it pops up the dictionary there—and then finally, read "How to Read a Book." I hope these tips are helpful to you, and I'm happy reading.