Do you ever think about how you read?
When you pick up a book, newspaper or digital device and start to read, it probably just feels like you are absorbing information without thinking about the process. It has become an unconscious skill. However, when you pick apart the steps that go from seeing printed marks on a page or screen to forming a mental representation of the meaning, it is a very complex process.
Reading involves very intricate optics where the cornea and lens focus an upside-down image on the light-sensitive cells of the retina at the back of eye. Biochemical systems translate the image into electrical signals and information processing involving many areas in the brain translate this into an experience of ‘seeing’. Of course, reading is far more than seeing and yet more areas of the brain decode language to form imagined sounds and pictures. This is not a neuroscience or anatomy textbook so I will largely ignore the mechanics of seeing words for the moment, though we will discuss this a little more later (Chapters 3 and 5).
In very broad terms, reading can be broken down into seven steps.
1 Recognition
Assuming you don’t speak Mandarin, if I gave you a page of Chinese text you wouldn’t be able to read it. The first step of reading is recognition of the characters that make up the text. As you’re reading this book in English the characters are the Roman alphabet. These combine to form words and eventually sentences.
Do you remember how you were taught to read? There are two main methods. The one currently favoured by British government educational advisors is called Synthetic Phonics. This teaches the sounds associated with individual letters and combinations of letters in isolation. For example, children might be taught a short vowel sound (e.g. /a/) in addition to some consonant sounds (e.g. /c/, /t/). Then the children are taught to blend the sounds together to form the word (e.g. /c/ -/a/ -/t/; ‘cat’). The alternative method is the Look–Say system where whole words are introduced with a verbal response. For example, the child is shown a picture of a cat with the word clearly printed underneath. The teacher asks the child to identify the word (and picture) verbally. If the child says ‘doggie’, for example, they are corrected before moving on to the next picture. Eventually, the pictures are removed, the child identifies just the words and is in a similar position to someone who is taught phonics.
Both methods have merit. Using synthetic phonics, children generally take less time to learn to read and they can tackle unfamiliar vocabulary more easily. Both methods involve saying the words out loud and hence virtually all readers still ‘hear the words in their heads’ when reading, a process called ‘subvocalisation’. This is necessary for comprehension and some slow readers actually mouth the words or mumble them under their breath. Many teachers of speed reading advocate the total elimination of subvocalisation. In fact one online course claims, ‘The point to be made is that as long as you continue the habit of subvocalisation, you will never achieve reading speeds associated with excellent readers which are 700 or more words per minute.’ This is not my approach as subvocalisation has many benefits in terms of memory and comprehension. It need NOT slow you down, as we shall see (Chapter 8).
2 Assimilation
Having recognised the words of a piece of text, the next step is actually taking them in. Have you ever reached the bottom of a page when reading a book but with no idea about what you read? Your recognition of the words was fine but your assimilation was nearly zero. The process of assimilation relies on your eyes and brain working in harmony. There are many factors that influence assimilation. These include:
Your physical wellbeing
It is hard to read effectively if you are excessively tired. Illness will dramatically reduce your reading speed and comprehension.
If you are particularly physically unfit your reading will be less effective. Remember the Latin saying, ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ (a sound mind in a healthy body).
Your environment for reading
By far the easiest and quickest way for anybody to improve their reading concentration is to remove physical discomfort when reading.
Choose a comfortable chair with a straight back, neither too soft nor too hard. It should support your neck, shoulders and upper back so that you sit upright with good posture. Bad posture, with a hunched back and a compressed chest, leads to shallow breathing and reduces the amount of oxygen reaching the brain. It can also contribute to back pain and other related problems. Kneeling chairs are an option as they reduce lower back strain by dividing the burden of the weight on the shins as well as the buttocks and pelvis. A common problem is that people choose to read on a comfy sofa or sinking into an armchair, curled up or with their legs outstretched on a footstool. Some people even read whilst lying on their bed during the day. In all these cases you are far too relaxed to engage with the book and are just promoting sleep. It is advisable to read at a desk at a comfortable height.
When you sit in a chair for a long period of time, it is important that the blood circulation to your legs continues. You should sit so that your thighs are parallel to the floor when your lower legs are upright and your feet flat on the floor. In other words, the front of your seat should not cut off the blood supply to your legs. You can always use a little foot platform to lift up your feet and legs, if you need to have your seat higher when sitting at a desk, for example.
Do not cross your legs whilst sitting, as this will restrict blood supply. If you get cramp or ‘pins and needles’ in your legs this is a sign that you have been sitting in an awkward position with poor blood flow.
Insufficient lighting or too much brightness can cause eyestrain. Choose even light levels, preferably with natural daylight from a window.
Regulate the temperature of the room so that you are not cold but not so warm that it makes you sleepy.
Find somewhere you can have peace and quiet. If you are in a noisy environment, experiment with active noise control headphones. These produce an anti-noise signal that cancels out ambient noise. You could even use earplugs or industrial ear-defenders that will physically exclude noise but may be less comfortable to wear.
Try to minimise interruptions. Get a ‘do not disturb’ sign for your door or even lock yourself in your office or study as long as you can do so without contravening fire safety rules. Unplug or switch off your phone.
Pleasant surroundings are important. Reading should be as pleasurable as possible. If it becomes a drudge you will derive far less benefit from it. How often have you been to the library, especially at a university, and found that half of the people studying there were either bored to tears or struggling to stay awake?
Your emotional state
If you’re worrying about something whilst reading this will be a distraction, nagging at the back of your mind. It is a good idea to write down anything on your mind before a reading or study period. The act of literally setting aside thoughts means you can focus much more of your attention on the text. Another approach is called the Sedona Method. Basically this involves removing negative emotional content by bringing it into your conscious mind and then letting go. Think about your problems or distractions and ask yourself three questions: ‘Can I let this go?’, ‘Will I let it go?’, ‘When?’, to which the answers should be: ‘Yes’, ‘Yes’ and ‘Now’.
If you’re fit and well, in a good environment and have the right state of mind you can concentrate on the next step of reading.
3 Comprehension
By comprehension, we mean integration of the information within the book. For example, if you’re reading a novel and certain characters, events and locations are introduced early in the story then you need to comprehend these elements in order to make sense of the plot when they are referred to later. In a study book, concepts will often be introduced at the start of a section and then expanded in subsequent chapters. If you do not comprehend the concepts when introduced, you will struggle with the future references to them.
If you have to read in a non-native language, this will often be a barrier to your comprehension. As speed reading involves taking in information at very near to the speed of thought, you must be able to think in the language that you are reading. If you have to mentally translate what you read then this will act as a bottleneck in the same way that a production line can only work at the speed of the slowest step.
Several years ago, I ran a speed reading course as part of the graduate induction programme for a bank in the Netherlands. The majority of the students were native Dutch speakers but the course was conducted in English. Most the delegates improved their speed but then hit a plateau. This was their speed of translation. It was interesting that two students in the group continued to increase their speed by great leaps. One of them was English and the other had spent several years studying in America so was immersed in the language to the extent that he habitually thought in English.
Wherever possible try to get translations of books in your first language. If the publisher has done the translation for you, it will make your task of reading much easier.
4 Understanding
Understanding differs from comprehension in that it relates your existing knowledge to new information acquired from the text. You are combining your own ideas, experiences and preconceptions with those expressed by the author. Understanding can also include comparing viewpoints of different authors from a variety of books on any given subject or bringing together differing subjects to take a holistic or interdisciplinary approach.
If you are studying, examiners are aiming to determine the depth and breadth of your knowledge. The difference between an A grade and an A* is often demonstrating that you can see how a subject fits into a broader context and connects to other areas. This is what understanding is all about. I will explain more about this later (Chapter 9).
It is understanding that leads to innovation, progress and new ideas.
5 Storage
If your purpose for reading is simply to pass the time then storage becomes less important. However, if you are reading for study or for work then it is vital to remember what you have read. Reading without storage largely defeats the point of reading in the first place. It’s important to store information in such a way that it is easy to retrieve. Apply effective note-taking strategies that use keywords and highlighting or, even better, a technique such as Mind Mapping. For long-term memory it is important to review your notes regularly and even use memory techniques to embed the information more strongly. We will cover retention in more detail later (Chapters 8 and 9).
In addition to memory or storage in your head, information can be stored on your computer, in a library or on a bookshelf. How much time have you spent looking for a particular book, or a file on your computer that you remember using years ago but have completely lost track of? Computer search tools like Spotlight on my Mac are somewhat useful. The problem is that, as it looks for keywords, it can often find these in a completely different context in irrelevant files. Always try to use logical filenames and save things in the right folder. I must admit to being guilty of saving a lot of files to the desktop and then, when it gets too cluttered, copying everything into a single folder. This leads to files from disparate projects being lumped together in a haphazard manner resulting in wasted time searching.
6 Recall
Have you ever gone into an exam after having studied all the relevant material yet, when faced with the questions, your mind has gone blank? Maybe you have had an interview where you knew all the answers but couldn’t give them when required.
This happened to me when I was interviewed for a place at Cambridge University after leaving school. I was faced with a panel of interviewers and asked detailed mathematics questions. Very shortly after I left the room, I suddenly realised why they had asked the specific questions they did and that they built a trigonometric identity. I hadn’t spotted this in the interview. I knew I had blown my chance and wouldn’t be offered a place. My storage was perfect but, due to the stress of the situation, my recall was far from it.
It is important to be able to recall information when required or at least to know where to access it easily. Recall is only as good as the source of information stored. Beware of relying on a single source, especially on the internet, as accuracy is not guaranteed. I remember when composer Ronnie Hazlehurst, who was responsible for many well-known TV theme tunes, sadly died in October 2007. Several obituaries wrongly claimed he had written the song Reach for the band S Club 7. The source of the error was an anonymous entry on Wikipedia. Journalists at BBC News, the Guardian, the Independent and The Times, amongst others, were all caught out by the hoax.
7 Communicating, applying and creating
If you read something and do nothing with it, what was the point of reading it in the first place?
We usually need to do something with the information that we acquire from text. This could be giving a presentation, raising issues at a meeting, answering an exam question or writing an essay.
Alternatively, your reading may be used as a foundation for future study or lifelong learning. Many people have the misguided opinion that we stop learning when we leave school. Quite the opposite is true. We should continue to learn throughout life.
‘I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.’
Mark Twain
Another false belief is that if you continue to study and learn throughout your life, your brain will get full up. This perception is based on a false analogy of the brain as a filing cabinet where the more paper you put in, the less space there is left. In fact the brain is synergetic in operation. This means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Whenever you have a thought, a network of brain cells signal to each other by releasing neurotransmitter chemicals across the gaps, called synapses, between each cell and the next. This memory trace, as it is called, is fleeting and fragile. However, if the same thought, action or skill is repeated the connections become stronger. More chemicals are available for release next time. This phenomenon, called ‘long-term potentiation’, leaves the memory trace a little stronger. Over time, new connections grow to make a multi-channel pathway in the brain.
You can think of this process by an analogy of crossing a field of wheat. If you try to walk across a crop field, the first time will be quite difficult as you have to part and tread down stems. If someone follows you along the same pathway it will be easier. Someone following them will find it easier still. Eventually there will be a wide new footpath across the field.
What has this got to do with the amount that you can learn? All learning is based on connections of brain cells. The more connections there are, the easier it is to form new connections. If you have a conceptual framework in place you can associate new knowledge more easily. The more you learn the more you can learn and the easier it becomes.
Even if you are reading simply to keep abreast of current developments in your field or the world in general, you will probably want to discuss what you have learnt with friends or colleagues. Being able to communicate what you have read with appropriate detail and rephrase it in your own words is a very important skill.
‘The more you read,
the more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
the more places you’ll go.’
Dr Seuss
STOP YOUR TIMER NOW (word count 2,787)
- What are the two main methods for learning to read? [2]
- Name the seven steps of reading. [7]
- Name one of the factors that can interfere with assimilation. [1]
Check your answers in Appendix 1.
Number of points × 10 = % comprehension
Calculation
Timer reading
Minutes: |
|
Seconds: |
divide by 60 and add to whole minutes |
2,787/time = |
Speed (words per minute) |
Enter your comprehension and speed in the chart in the Introduction.
You will need a friend or colleague to help you with this exercise. It relies on observation of how the eyes move. It is interesting that you cannot see your eyes moving in a mirror. If the brain did not edit out the information coming from the eyes as they move you would see blurred images, like you get if you shake a camera when taking a picture on a long exposure.
Face your partner and hold the book up so that they can see your eyes whilst you read. Ask them to watch your eyes carefully. Read about half a page of text at your normal speed. Then do the same thing trying to push yourself to read faster. Once your partner has watched you, exchange roles and repeat the exercise.
Discuss what you observed. This will be described in detail in the next chapter.
