May 27 2009
Enhance your Reading By Practicing It – What a Novel Idea
Occasionally I invite a guest blogger to share their insights on effective reading because I think it important you get a balanced perspective on how to develop this important skill.
In this post, Tiffany Davis shares here thoughts on how important it is for you to keep practicing your reading.
I must say she does have a good point and makes it very well too.
Have a read of this and let me know what you think.
Over to you Tiffany…….
Enhance Your Reading
Most people who suffer from reading problems or a lack of retaining what they read, do so because they are out of the practice of reading.
Adding a healthy collection of books to your library will deliver the necessary skills without any additional help.
While you could add countless numbers of books to your library from your local Barnes and Noble, the quality of the book is what will further your reading skills and allow you to gain an enhanced vocabulary as well.
Most “classic” books will help you delve into comprehensive reading, due to the language with which they were written (referring to books published before 1920). These authors wrote in a different time period, allowing you as a reader to transfer yourself into the colloquial aspects of each century.
Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, and Dostoevsky will surely require a great amount of concentration, but making your way through these classically historical novels will increase not only your reading skills, but your knowledge of history in general.
Many classic books go unread by modern society as there is less and less emphasis put on retaining literature.
English lessons and lectures fall on deaf ears as many in the younger generation increasingly rely on technology to get through life; many believe there is no need for these types of books in a modern bookstore when there are much easier books to get through like the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyers.
However, timeless classics like A Tale of Two Cities remains largely underrepresented in this time, and it is novels like this which can help to further your reading comprehension.
While many of these works of literature may take weeks for you to complete, it is important that you truly focus on the messages which each novel contains.
Your knowledge of literature should not end once you graduate college; this is how your reading skills deteriorate. By divulging yourself with higher-tiered books, you will triple your vocabulary in weeks as well as train your mind to be able to focus on the reading material at hand.
A daily dose of magazine articles will not satiate your reading comprehension for a few weeks; rather, you need to ensure that you are reading books at a proper level which will allow you to absorb much of the writing style.
While it seems pointless to read in a day in which there are books on CD and most classic literary works have movies, it is an important pastime that people have been doing for centuries.
It was not that long ago when reading was seen to be a feat accomplished only by the privileged few, and we should take advantage of the fact that it is readily available to us all now.
We additionally need to ensure that reading this type of literature does not become lost between generations; it needs to be kept alive and this can only be achieved through interest by the general public to preserve this type of reading ability.
This post was contributed by Tiffany Davis, who writes about online bachelors degree. She welcomes your feedback at TiffanyMDavis82 at gmail.com
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May 27 2009
Robert Watson :
Speed reading novels is generally a bad idea, but if you’re only reading with the idea of getting the gist of it for a literature class, and you don’t actually care about the book itself, then you can still use it. Major details, the flow of the story, class lectures and the cliff notes should suffice.
Jun 1 2009
Michael :
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your comments both here and on the other posts.
I think it is important to understand the point Tiffany is making here.
I don’t think she is suggesting that you speed read the novels (in the sense of deliberately reading them much much faster). Her point is about developing your overall reading abillity which includes the broadening of your vocabulary and exercising your comprehension skills by making sense of writing that might need you to focus a little more intently than say a magazine article.
However when it comes back to “Speed Reading” there are different reasons for using a novel. As I usually work with business people who are keen to develop their reading effectiveness on work and professional material, I often suggest they practice speed reading techniques on a novel where it doesn’t matter that they get it “right”, just that they experience faster reading as they train their eye/brain combination.
But the other way of looking at it is that there is nothing wrong with speed reading a novel by applying the strategies of effective reading. The average reading speed I find is between 200-300 words per minute and often the quality of that reading is poor because invariably the reader finds themselves at the foot of a page an is unable to remember a word of what they have just “read”.
With the right techniques and a bit of practice it is possible to very easily take your reading speed to 500-600 with improved comprehension. So applying this “speed reading” to a novel actually increases the quality of the reading.
If you want to properly digest the novel then applying techniques like skimming and scanning on their own would not be recommended.
Regards
Michael