Reading and skimming advice
You may have read about the people who can 'read' at 2,500 words per minute. Maybe they can. But it can often be misleading to see reading as simply word recognition. After all, reading is a complex process, involving not only words, but also punctuation, idiom, syntax, grammar, writer's nuance etc.
The important thing in reading is not speed, but understanding. That's harder to measure, and perhaps for that reason harder to sell. But proper comprehension skills are vital to our way of life. In a world of information, the ability to not only accumulate, but also process information, is vital.
Let's look at some simple ways we can improve comprehension skills in reading. First of all, not all words are the same. Some are names (nouns), some describe things (adjectives), some describe actions (verbs) and some describe actions (adverbs). It's worth knowing how these basic groups of words operate in the context of any given sentence.
For example, nouns will often appear near the front of a sentence. They're very important in comprehension, as they tell us *who* or *what* the sentence is all about.
Adjectives will immediately precede (go before) most nouns. They carry less comprehension weight than nouns, as their primary function is to describe a noun, and a lot of nouns: 'house', 'boy', 'eternity' etc. are pretty much self-describing. After all, what else could eternity be described as, but 'long'?
Verbs will follow a noun. They tell the reader what action the noun performs. This is important, as actions often convey a lot of information about mood or circumstances. For example, in the sentence: "the man shuddered...", we understand not only the physical action of a man shaking, but get a rather good idea of his feelings, and the possible circumstances which might account for them.
Adverbs will often go after a verb, to clarify the exact description of the action. For example, 'he smiled happily' is very different in meaning from 'he smiled sarcastically'. Adverbs, like adjectives, vary in their importance in terms of comprehension. As with adjectives, it depends on the verb in question. In general, verbs like 'crying', 'shouted', 'sneezes' etc. are fairly self-explanatory. Verbs like 'gave', 'said', 'dreams' may be less so.
Knowing the basic groups of words, and how they generally operate, allows the reader a fuller opportunity to comprehend the full meaning of given sentence. Children, especially, will benefit from understanding what adverbs are, where they usually stand in a sentence, and their role.
It also helps when it comes to 'skimming'. This is a skill, often needed by business people or students, which allows the reader to discriminate between the more important parts of a piece of information, and the less important ones. The more important parts will generally consist of nouns (especially names in a non-fiction piece) and verbs. Other things to look out for when skimming would be numbers (statistics, dates) and tense (whether an action is described in the past, present or future). The less important parts of a page would be little words (a, the, or, and, if, is, as, etc.), repetitions, some adjectives and adverbs.
Let's look at a couple of examples of skimming in practice; one fictional the other non-fictional:
"Suddenly, he heard a loud bang in the distance. Mark's head began to spin wildly. The explosion had been close, too close. Panicking, he clutched desperately at his camera and turned to flee. Then, a voice, faint but growing stronger, crept towards him. He looked round, it was a young girl. "Mark, are you okay?" Mark didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He was alive. That was all he knew."
We're highlight the parts of text most important in comprehension:
"Suddenly, he heard a loud bang in the distance. Mark's head began to spin wildly. The explosion had been close, too close. Panicking, he clutched desperately at his camera and turned to flee. Then, a voice, faint but growing stronger, crept towards him. He looked round, it was a young girl. "Mark, are you okay?" Mark didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He was alive. That was all he knew."
Of the 71 words in the above text, only 38 are essential to comprehension. Thus, and without resort to special techniques, it is possible to read up to twice as fast through good skimming.
One more example:
"In November 1918, the Great War finished. Some 20 million men, women and children are estimated to have perished during the years of conflict and the flu epidemic which ensued. The German leader, Kaiser Wilheim was replaced with an embryonic new republic, called Weimar. It would have to tackle, in 1923, spiraling hyper-inflation, and later the rise and rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis. The first war was only the forerunner of a conflagration still yet to emerge."
Where dates and names are involved, as in the non-fiction piece above, skimming can prove a very useful and important skill, and tool for comprehension.
For more info on skimming techniques and advice:
http://www.csbsju.edu/academicadvising/help/skimming.html - Basic advice on skimming, including notes on different letter types and and practical usage advice (*** out of 5)
