Learning How to Read
by Michael Franklin | November 10, 2009
If effective reading strategies are the lifeblood of one’s intellectual development as a doctoral learner, what are they?How do you use them?And when do you know which ones to use?
In the introduction to his now classic work How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler addresses the role of reading in the early years of mass media.Writing in 1940, Adler recognized that film, radio, and television could legitimately convey information and entertainment to people.But the dilemma he identified is that the rapid proliferation of media forms enabled the popular assumption that reading a movie, a song, or radio program was an inherently passive act, that the reader sits moon-eyed and inert while information is poured into her head.Adler rejected this.He argued that all reading is active and that it is precisely a reader’s ability to strategically deploy different techniques to process different kinds of texts that pulses the heart of true learning.
Adler explains that reading can be broken down into three cumulative levels that each learner must strive to master:elementary reading, inspectional reading, and analytic reading.Whereas the first level pertains to basic literacy, the second and third levels are of interest to us here.Adler describes inspectional reading as “the art of systematic skimming” (18, emphasis original) that builds upon basic reading skills to allow the reader to ask what a book is about.In short, inspectional reading allows the reader to move beyond a surface knowledge of the book and to begin to develop a deeper understanding of what information it contains and what it argues.Analytic reading builds upon this process of understanding a book by equipping the reader with the proper approach, mindset, and tools to probe and interrogate a book.“Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it” (19).
Nearly seventy years later, Adler’s insights are even more important in the accelerated age of Twitter, for the written word is still the dominant form of knowledge production in academia.
At the doctoral level you will alternate between inspectional reading and analytic reading. Knowing when to gut an article or a book for its content, and when to spend more time with pen in hand, unpacking each paragraph to gain a keener understanding of the inner workings and nuance of an author’s argument, will behoove you.Indeed, practicing how to take notes in the margins and how to use note-taking to demonstrate an argument’s progression will prepare you to flourish as a scholar.
To begin addressing the questions that introduce this entry, I encourage you to check out How to Read a Book from the library.I also want to push the Reading Strategies module in the Academic Success Center on iGuide.This module provides in-depth multimedia that illuminates the reading habits and techniques of a highly successful doctoral learner.
What are some reading techniques that you have found successful?
6 Responses to "Learning How to Read"
Emma Robert says:
Fantastic website, must come back here , very interesting content, bookmarked your blog for future reference.
A Yoakum says:
Just received ‘How to Read a Book’ today and on chapter 3. Thanks for the advice..hoping it will help me when I start my PhD program December 7th.
Michael Franklin says:
I’m glad you found this helpful!
I know that when I began my doctoral program, reading Adler was tremendously helpful in putting it into perspective, as I had hundreds of pages of reading each week and just couldn’t read every single word. Adler helped me figure out how to manage all of this, and I feel that as a result my academic reading skills have definitely improved over time.
Good luck!
Derrick Darden says:
My reading technique is to write in the margins of a book or journal article, the author thoughts and arguments alone with my perspective and thoughts of the paragraph.
Michael Franklin says:
I think writing in the margins is one of the strongest practices to take up when reading analytically, as you not only are putting their argument together through your own thought process, but you’ll also be able to revisit those margin notes in the future, thus refreshing your memory about what is on that page.
Daniel Holmes says:
In my doctoral learner experience thus far at Capella I can say I had to figure this out the hard way, but this codifies what I had determined. Among my first few quarters at Capella I had to make a determination as to how to accomplish lengthy reading assignments in a short period of time. Unfortunately in this world of electronic sources (even if they are scanned in versions of traditional paper journals or books) the vast majority, in fact perhaps >95%, of all of my reading is not done on paper. I sit in front of my computer and read, not with any paper in hand. I rarely print anything. Thus I suggest students find an alternate way of note-taking. I myself found a journal program I use. I also use a mind mapping program but for me that’s really just for creating a visual map of concepts, not really for note-taking on specific articles. Perhaps as we move forward into the world of eReaders the two worlds will effectively merge but for now, at least in my own experience, they are separate. Lastly I believe Adobe Reader provides a way to take notes, but I haven’t looked into that.