It’s always the same story: you want to spend a good sum of the day reading your favorite book. You start to read, feeling good and efficient for the first 30 minutes. All of the sudden, it feels like the words are going through your eyes and out the back of your head.
Early studies (0:15-2:10) have revealed that, on average, a freshman in college can efficiently comprehend what they’re reading for about 25 minutes before they start to get that feeling mentioned before.
So this presents us with one question: how can we comprehend what we’re reading for longer periods of time?
Many people tend to struggle with that feeling of gazing over words without the information sticking. Luckily, the people who have lived before us have felt the same mind-numbing sensation while reading to create some pretty effective strategies to combat it.
Today, we will be uncovering the methodology behind comprehending more of what you read, and how to do that for longer periods of time.
1. Comprehension Monitoring
Obviously, if you want to learn how to comprehend what you read for longer times, you need to be aware of how long you can actively read before you start to gaze over words without comprehending them.
It’s all about becoming cognizant of your brain activity and realizing when you’re just skimming over words instead of actually reading them. Take note of the time that this happens and become conscious of that same time when you read next.
As discussed earlier, a freshman in college can read for about 25 minutes before they start to doze off. In this case, the freshman would take note of the 25-minute time, and be mindful of this time when he studies next.
When you become comprehension-conscious, you are able to:
- Use benchmarks to improve upon for next time
- Become aware of what you do and do not understand
- Give yourself a purpose to read in the first place
2. Metacognition
Metacognition can simply be put as “thinking about thinking.” Effective readers are able to apply metacognitive strategies to their studying routine in order to comprehend more of what they read.
The whole idea behind metacognition is to take control of your reading. Simply placing a few strictly designed methods around the base of your reading will allow an active mindset to kick in.
There are several methods to choose from or combine together:
- Identify where the difficulty occurs
“I don’t understand the second paragraph on page 76.”
- Identify what the difficulty is
“I don’t get what the author means when she says, ‘Arriving in America was a milestone in my grandmother’s life.'”
- Restate the difficult sentence or passage in your own words
“Oh, so the author means that coming to America was a very important event in her grandmother’s life.”
- Look back through the text
“The author talked about Mr. McBride in Chapter 2, but I don’t remember much about him. Maybe if I reread that chapter, I can figure out why he’s acting this way now.”
- Look forward in the text for information that might help them to resolve the difficulty
“The text says, ‘The groundwater may form a stream or pond or create a wetland. People can also bring groundwater to the surface.’ Hmm, I don’t understand how people can do that… Oh, the next section is called ‘Wells.’ I’ll read this section to see if it tells how they do it.”
Using these kinds of techniques will give you a reason to constantly think about what you’re reading (“thinking of thinking”). Just implementing a few of these allows the brain a purpose to actively look through the text and make sure that the words make sense.
Back to the example, the freshman in college would need to use these metacognitive techniques to improve their 25-minute benchmark. This will allow them to extend the duration in which they can actively read.
3. Summarization
Summaries allow us to put what we’ve just learned into a compact format of generalization.
Creating a summary requires the mind to pull the main events and occurrences out from your memory. It’s a simple and common method, yet it provides us with a way to double-check that we understood the overall gist of what we read.
In addition, summaries force you to put everything into your own words. This gives you a reason to retain the information you read and to actually understand it.
There are 3 main rules that go along with writing a summary:
- Find the main ideas.
A useful summary distills the material down to its most important points.
- Keep it brief.
A summary is not a rewrite—it’s a short summation of the original piece. A summary paragraph is usually around five to eight sentences. Keep it short and to the point.
- Use your own thoughts.
Write your summary in your own words, and avoid using exactly what the text said.
These rules will keep your summary short and effective. When you create summaries you are not only checking your comprehension and retention, but you are also providing a resource to come back to in a future need.
A summary can be made for every chapter, lesson, unit, etc. These become highly customizable when it comes to timing.