More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Started reading
September 4, 2023
How to Read a Book was first published in the early months of 1940.
One constant is that, to achieve all the purposes of reading, the desideratum must be the ability to read different things at different—appropriate—speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed.
Another thing that has not changed, unfortunately, is the failure to carry instruction in reading beyond the elementary level.
The introduction in Part One of the distinction of four levels of reading—elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical—is the basic and controlling change in the book’s organization and content.
1 The Activity and Art of Reading
One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance).
Active Reading
The Goals of Reading: Reading for Information and Reading for Understanding
The reason is that there are two possible relations between your mind and the book, not just one.
This may be similar to the distinction between knowledge telling and knowledge understanding.
The distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding is deeper than this.
What are the conditions under which this kind of reading—reading for understanding—takes place? There are two.
First, there is initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack.
Second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree, seldom perhaps fully, but always appr...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery
This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences between being able to remember something and being able to explain
Telling vs understanding.
Roscoe, R. D., & Chi, M. T. (2007). Understanding tutor learning: Knowledge-building and knowledge-telling in peer tutors’ explanations and questions. Review of educational research, 77(4), 534-574.
The point, however, is not to stop at being informed.
The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.
The reason why many people regard thinking as more closely associated with research and unaided discovery than with being taught is that they suppose reading and listening to be relatively effortless.
This discussion reminds me of Ausubels two dimensions. Rote-meaningful and discovery-reception.
Present and Absent Teachers
Yet there is good reason to place primary emphasis on reading, and let listening become a secondary concern.
Author’s distinction here does not apply to most lectures.
2 The Levels of Reading
The goal a reader seeks—be it entertainment, information or understanding—determines the way he reads.
There are four levels of reading.
The first level of reading we will call Elementary Reading.
At this level of reading, the question asked of the reader is “What does the sentence say?”
we come upon something we want to read that is written in a foreign language that we do not know very well. Then our first effort must be to identify the actual words.
Overcoming these difficulties usually allows us to read faster;
The second level of reading we will call Inspectional Reading. It is characterized by its special emphasis on time.
Still another name for this level might be skimming or pre-reading.
is “What does the sentence say?” the question typically asked at this level is “What is the book about?”
“What kind of book is it—a novel, a history, a scientific treatise?”
The third level of reading we will call Analytical Reading.
We also want to stress that analytical reading is hardly ever necessary if your goal in reading is simply information or entertainment. Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding.
The fourth and highest level of reading we will call Syntopical Reading.
Another name for this level might be comparative reading.
When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve.
Syntopical reading involves more. With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subjec...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
3 The First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading
The second historical trend is in the teaching of reading itself.
One was a variant on the synthetic ABC method, known as the phonic method.
A wholly different approach, analytical rather than synthetic, originated in Germany and was advocated by Horace Mann and other educators after about 1840. This involved teaching the visual recognition of whole words before giving any attention to letter-names or letter-sounds.
More recently, however, the pendulum has swung back again toward phonics, which indeed had never entirely left the curriculum.
And here the third historical trend comes into play. It is traditional in America to criticize the schools; for more than a century, parents, self-styled experts, and educators themselves have attacked and indicted the educational system.
No aspect of schooling has been more severely criticized than reading instruction.
Stages of Learning to Read
It is now widely accepted that there are at least four more or less clearly distinguishable stages in the child’s progress toward what is called mature reading ability.
first stage is known by the term “reading readiness.”
The important thing to remember is that jumping the gun is usually self-defeating. The child who is not yet ready to read is frustrated if attempts are made to teach him, and he may carry over his dislike
In the second stage, children learn to read very simple materials.
Indeed, this discovery of meaning in symbols may be the most astounding intellectual feat that any human being ever performs—and
Wouldn’t Piaget see this as a characteristic of a stage of development.
