-Martha Maxwell © Academic Skills Center, Dartmouth College 2001
Many of the words used in writing grammatically correct sentences actually
convey no meaning. If, in reading, you exert as much effort in conceptualizing
these meaningless words as you do important ones, you limit not only your
reading speed but your comprehension as well.
Skim once as rapidly as possible to determine the main idea and to identify
those parts that need careful reading. Reread more carefully to plug the gaps
in your knowledge.
Many college students feel that something must be wrong with their brain
power if they must read a textbook chapter more than once. To be sure, there
are students for whom one exposure to an idea in a basic course is enough, but
they either have read extensively or have an excellent background or a high
degree of interest in the subject.
For most students in most subjects, reading once is not enough. However,
this is not to imply that an unthinking Pavlovian-like rereading is necessary
to understand and retain materials. Many students automatically regress or
reread doggedly with a self-punishing attitude. ("I didn't get a thing out of
that paragraph the first time, so if I punish myself by rereading it maybe I
will this time.") This is the hardest way to do it.
Good reading is selective reading. It involves selecting those sections that
are relevant to your purpose in reading. Rather than automatically rereading,
take a few seconds to quiz yourself on the material you have just read and then
review those sections that are still unclear or confusing to you.
The most effective way of spending each study hour is to devote as little
time as possible to reading and as much time as possible to testing yourself,
reviewing, organizing, and relating the concepts and facts, mastering the
technical terms, formulas, etc., and thinking of applications of the
concepts-in short, spend your time learning ideas, not painfully processing
words visually.
Many college students feel that it is somehow sinful to skip passages in
reading and to read rapidly. We are not sure just how this attitude develops,
but some authorities have suggested that it stems from the days when the Bible
was the main book read, savored, and reread. Indeed, the educated person was
one who could quote long passages from these books from memory.
Today proliferation of books and printed matter brought about by the
information explosion creates a reading problem for everyone. Furthermore, much
of this printed material offers considerably less than Shakespeare or the Bible
in meaning or style. You must, of course, make daily decisions as to what is
worth spending your time on, what can be glanced at or put aside for future
perusal, and what can be relegated to the wastebasket.
The idea that you cannot skip but have to read every page is old-fashioned.
Children, however, are still taught to feel guilty if they find a novel dull
and out it down before finishing it. I once had a student who felt she could
not have books in her home unless she had read every one of them from cover to
cover. Studies show that this is the reason many people drop Book-of-the-Month
Club subscriptions; they begin to collect books, cannot keep up with their
reading, and develop guilty feelings about owning books they have not had time
to read.
The idea that some books are used merely for reference purposes and are nice
to have around in case you need them seems to be ignored in our schools. Sir
Francis Bacon once said that some books are to be nibbled and tasted, some are
to be swallowed whole, and a few need to be thoroughly chewed and digested no
matter how trivial the content. No wonder many people dislike reading.
Nonsense! The best and most effective way to increase your reading rate is
to consciously force yourself to read faster. Machines are useful as
motivators, but only because they show you that you can read faster without
losing understanding. Remember that they are inflexible, unthinking devices
that churn away at the same rate regardless of whether the sentence is trivial
or vital, simple or difficult. They are limited too, for if you are practicing
skimming, you are looking for main ideas so that you can read more carefully.
Since these may not be located in a definite pattern (e.g. one per line) nor be
equally spaced so that the machine can conveniently time them, machines may
actually slow you down and retard the speed with which you locate the ideas
that you need for understanding. If you find yourself in need of a pusher, use
a 3x5 card as a pacer, or use your hand, or your finger. However, there is one
caution you should observe if you try this. Be sure that your hand or finger or
card is used to push, not merely to follow your eyes.
Many people refuse to push themselves faster in reading for fear that they
will lose comprehension. However, research shows that there is little
relationship between rate and comprehension. Some students read rapidly and
comprehend well, others read slowly and comprehend poorly. Whether you have
good comprehension depends on whether you can extract and retain the important
ideas from your reading, not on how fast you read. If you can do this, you can
also increase your speed. If you "clutch up" when trying to read fast or skim
and worry about your comprehension, it will drop because your mind is occupied
with your fears and you are not paying attention to the ideas that you are
reading.
If you concentrate on your purpose for reading -- e.g. locating main ideas
and details, and forcing yourself to stick to the task of finding them quickly
-- both your speed and comprehension could increase. Your concern should be not
with how fast you can get through a chapter, but with how quickly you can
locate the facts and ideas that you need.
This belief is nonsense too, assuming that you have good vision or wear
glasses that correct your eye problems. Of course, if you cannot focus your
eyes at the reading distance, you will have trouble learning to skim and scan.
Furthermore, if you have developed the habit of focusing your eyes too narrowly
and looking at word parts, it will be harder for you to learn to sweep down a
page of type rapidly.
Usually it is your brain, not your eyes, that slows you down in reading.
Your eyes are capable of taking in more words than your brain is used to
processing. If you sound out words as you read, you will probably read very
slowly and have difficulty in skimming and scanning until you break this
habit.
Steps to Follow in Skimming for the Main Ideas
Remember that authors of college textbooks want you to recognize the
important concepts. They use: