Learn How To Read A Book Effectively And Become A Good Reader

All of us can read but can we read well? Reading does not mean reading… what? Well, yes. If you’re reading, it is important that you understand what the text is saying. It means that one must not read just for the sake of it, instead one must read to gain something out of it. Information, for example. In this article, we’ve come up with tips that will not only help you read a book in your pastime but also for assignment purposes so you can get good grades.

Decide what it is that you want to read:

What is your genre? If you know, you’re past the initial step and if you don’t, ask yourself. After this, you want to pick one book out of the shelf that interests you and begin reading it. When reading for an assignment, look for relevant books and sources. Make sure that the publications are from the last ten years.

“But how do I read?” Stick with us to find out!

Preview a text:

To save yourself time, work smartly by looking at the title, reading the introduction and conclusion, and any headings or table of contents. This will give you an idea as to what you’re going to read about, and you will win extra time to read more stuff.

When reading a text, pay attention to the questions that arise in your mind and think about how you can answer them. Make sure that the text is giving you meaningful information on your topic of interest.

If you don’t preview a text before diving into the book, you might receive information that only ‘sounds’ useful, or you might end up reading a book of your least interest.

Use different ways of reading:

Another tip is to focus on what you want to read. By doing this, you can utilize different ways to read texts and get information faster.

Skim-reading: This means to quickly go over texts to get the general idea of a passage. Another way you can skim-read is to look at repeated words/concepts to understand the message of the passage.

Scan-reading: When you scan-read, you’re able to focus on the important details of a passage. For example, the important details of a recipe are its ingredients and cooking time, and temperature.

Close-reading: If you have an eye for detail, you should opt for close-reading. It’s different from the above two ways of reading which means that it requires thorough attention.

Comparison between parts of one text: This is another type of thorough reading which requires you to read every bit of a passage, like the introduction, body, and conclusion. By doing this, you will be able to compare everything critically and understand how it all aligns.

Make a personal approach: It is important to reflect on the text personally to form opinions that are emotion-based. This way, you will connect to the book and understand it better. If reading for an assignment, it’ll help you develop an organic outcome.

Ask critical questions:

To avoid getting lost while reading or losing attention, keep your mind awake by asking yourself critical questions. Jot down the questions as they pop up in case you forget. For example, how is this text pertinent to my topic of interest? Or is this text somewhat connected to what I read earlier?

Make notes:

It’s normal for humans to forget. Because there’s already a lot of information in our brains, we fail to remember everything. To play safe, write down the points that feel important to you as you read. This will save you from having to re-read everything.

Find a connection:

Try to look for connections between readings and write them down as you progress. This way, when you’re done reading, you won’t have to go through the struggle of finding links between texts from so much information. For an assignment, you can similar texts from different sources into one text.

Finding a connection will also help you in seeing the big picture of your topic. How? Well, as you’re making connections and writing them down, you can come back to revise while you’re reading.

Learn the language of the text:

If you’re not a native English speaker, it can be difficult for you to understand well-articulated texts. In this situation, you can pay attention to how the writer has used vocabulary to form sentences. This means that if you don’t understand a word at first glance, read the whole sentence to see how it’s been used. This will help you understand the meaning of the word.