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Started reading
September 4, 2023
The third stage is characterized by rapid progress in vocabulary building and by increasing skill in “unlocking” the meaning of unfamiliar words through context clues.
Finally, the fourth stage is characterized by the refinement and enhancement of the skills previously acquired. Above all, the student begins to be able to assimilate his reading experiences—that is, to carry over concepts from one piece of writing to another,
This, the mature stage of reading, should be reached by young persons in their early teens.
Stages and Levels
The first stage of elementary reading—reading readiness—corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences.
The second stage—word mastery—corresponds to the first grade experience of the typical child
The third stage of elementary reading—vocabulary growth and the utilization of context—is typically (but not universally, even for normal children) acquired at about the end of the fourth grade
The fourth and final stage of elementary reading is attained at about the time the pupil leaves or graduates from elementary school or junior high school.
He has mastered the first level of reading, that is all; he can read on his own and is prepared to learn more about reading. But he does not yet know how to read beyond the elementary level.
Higher Levels of Reading and Higher Education
Traditionally, the high schools of America have provided little reading instruction for their students, and the colleges have provided none.
That does not mean, however, that reading instruction beyond the elementary level is offered in many U.S. colleges to this day. In fact, it is offered in almost none of them. Remedial reading instruction is not instruction in the higher levels of reading. It serves only to bring students up to a level of maturity in reading that they should have attained by the time they graduated from elementary school.
4 The Second Level of Reading: Inspectional Reading
Inspectional reading is a true level of reading. It is quite distinct from the level that precedes it (elementary reading)
Inspectional Reading I: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading
Your main aim is to discover whether the book requires a more careful reading.
1. LOOK AT THE TITLE PAGE AND, IF THE BOOK HAS ONE, AT ITS PREFACE.
2. STUDY THE TABLE OF CONTENTS to obtain a general sense of the book’s structure;
3. CHECK THE INDEX if the book has one—most expository works do.
Inspectional Reading II: Superficial Reading
this: In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.
Pay attention to what you can understand and do not be stopped by what you cannot immediately grasp. Go right on reading past the point where you have difficulties in understanding, and you will soon come to things you do understand.
In most cases, you will not be able to puzzle the thing out by sticking to it. You will have a much better chance of understanding it on a second reading,
The two steps involved in inspectional reading are both taken rapidly. The competent inspectional reader will accomplish them both quickly, no matter how long or difficult the book he is trying to read.
Race through even the hardest book. You will then be prepared to read it well the second time.
The first stage of inspectional reading—the stage we have called systematic skimming—serves to prepare the analytical reader to answer the questions that must be asked during the first stage of that level.
Could this also be described as knowledge activation.
5 How to Be a Demanding Reader
The Essence of Active Reading: The Four Basic Questions a Reader Asks
the one simple prescription for active reading. It is: Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.
There are four main questions you must ask about any book.I
1. WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE?
3. IS THE BOOK TRUE, IN WHOLE OR PART?
4. WHAT OF IT? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things?
You must remember to ask them as you read. The habit of doing that is the mark of a demanding reader.
But, as we have indicated, merely asking questions is not enough. You have to try to answer them. And although that could be done, theoretically, in your mind only, it is much easier to do it with a pencil in your hand.
After finishing the book and making your personal index on the back endpapers, turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (you have already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic outline and an order of parts.
The Three Kinds of Note-making
The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading
6 Pigeonholing a Book
Practical vs. Theoretical Books
The practical has to do with what works in some way, at once or in the long run. The theoretical concerns something to be seen or understood.
I often claim we all form theories as we have need for explanations of how and why. Students and others use theoretical as a pejorative
We must pass from knowing what is the case to knowing what to do about it if we wish to get somewhere.
This can be summarized in the distinction between knowing that and knowing how.
What they mean, of course, is that Kant is wrong, in their opinion, in his basic approach. But that does not mean that his book is any less a practical work in the sense we are employing here.
So, as I understand this perspective practical is not defined by whether a proposed course of action will work, but whether a proposed course of action is provided.
Because of the difference in method and subject matter, the philosopher usually finds it easier to teach students who have not been previously taught by his colleagues, whereas the scientist prefers the student whom his colleagues have already prepared.
7 X-raying a Book
But every book without exception that is worth reading at all has a unity and an organization of parts.
To find out what a book is about in this sense is to discover its theme or main point.
The third rule can be expressed as follows: RULE 3. SET FORTH THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE BOOK, AND SHOW HOW THESE ARE ORGANIZED INTO A WHOLE, BY BEING ORDERED TO ONE ANOTHER AND TO THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE.
I believe Adler is making the argument I make is that a textbook is more than the sum of parts because the author has a structure for how the parts fit together.
The rooms are independent, in part. Each has its own structure and interior decoration. But they are not absolutely independent and separate. They are connected by doors and arches, by corridors and stairways, by what architects call a “traffic pattern.”
A book is like a house.
