Outline:
Part 1 - The Dimensions of Reading
Chapter 1: The Activity and the Art of Reading
- Reading purposes (types): For information and for understanding
- Learning methods: By instruction and by discovery
- Goal of this book:
- Learn to learn by (aided, by a book) discovery, with an ‘absent teacher’ (author), for understanding.
- Learn to make books teach us well.
Chapter 2: The Levels of Reading
- Elementary reading: What does the book/ sentence say?
- Inspectional reading: What is the book about? What kind of book is it?
- Analytical reading: What does the book mean?
- Synoptical reading: How does the book compare with other books?
Chapter 3: The First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading
- Four basic stages:
- ‘reading readiness’ – pre-school/ kindergarten experience (including physical, intellectual, language, personal and general readiness).
- Simple reading- first grade (basic skills, ~400 vocabulary)
- Expanded reading – end of four grade (context clues, vocabulary growth, enjoyment)
- Refined reading – junior high school (understand concepts, compare different views)
- Need for instruction of higher levels of reading in Higher Education
- High school level: analytical reading, inspectional reading
- College level: synoptical reading
New formula of reading art: Apply various-speed reading depending on reading materials and reading purposes.
- Systematic Skimming (Pre-reading) (Time: less than 1 hour)
- Look at the title page and its preface: Subject? Special angles of the author? Category?
- Study the table of contents: Structure?
- Check the index: Important topics covered in the book?
- Read the publisher’s blurb: Any important things covered in the book?
- Look at the Chapters that seem to be pivotal to its argument: read the summary.
- Thumb through entire book, read a few paragraphs and/or pages randomly esp. at the summary. Try to find the main arguments.
- Superficial reading
- Read through the book once, without pondering at thing you don’t understand.
- Pay attention to what you can understand. Keep looking for these and concentrate on them.
- What you can understand at this step can be used as clues for next stage of reading to find the meaning of things you did not understand.
- Four basic questions:
- What is the book about as a whole? (Structural reading)
- What is being said in detail, and how? (Interpretative reading)
- Is the book true, in whole or part? (Critical reading)
- What of it? (Critical reading)
- How to make the book your own
- Underline key sentences
- Vertical lines to mark key sections
- Star, Asterisk at margin to emphasize 10~12 most important sentences or passages.
- Number the sequence of points in argument at the margin
- Number reference (pages, other books) at the margin
- Circle key words or phrases
- Write your own notes (Q&A, ideas, simplifying a sentence, other notes,…) at the top or bottom.
- Write personal index of the author’s points (in their order) at the endpapers of book
- Draft your basic outline at the front-pages
- Three kinds of note-making
- Structural: at inspectional reading, about the structure
- Conceptual: at analytical reading, about the truth and significance
- Dialectical: at synoptical reading, about the shape of the discussion in a larger context
THE FIRST STAGE- STRUCTURAL READING, to answer the first basic question “What is the book about as a whole?”
Chapter 6: Pigeonholing a Book
Rule 1: “YOU MUST KNOW WHAT KIND OF BOOK YOU ARE READING, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS AS EARLY IN THE PROCESS AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO READ.”
Chapter 7: X-raying a book
Rule 2: “STATE THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE BOOK IN A SINGLE SENTENCE, OR AT MOST A FEW SENTENCES.” This means to find the skeleton hidden between its covers.
Rule 3: Outline the book: “SET FORTH THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE BOOK, AND SHOW HOW THESE ARE ORGANIZED INTO A WHOLE, BY BEING ORDERED TO ONE ANOTHER AND TO THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE.”
The art of outlining a book: “a piece of writing should have unity, clarity and coherence… we must find it.”
Rule 4: “FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR’S PROBLEMS WERE.” Or What question is he trying to answer?
THE SECOND STAGE- INTERPRETATIVE READING, to answer the second basic question “What does it say in detail, and how?”
Chapter 8: Coming to Terms with an Author
Rule 5: INTERPRETE KEY WORDS: “FIND THE IMPORTANT WORDS AND THROUGH THEM COME TO TERMS WITH THE AUTHOR.”
- Key words: emphasized, repeated, difficult, technical, quarreling words; the set of words that express the author’s main ideas, leading concepts,…
- Terms (meanings): from context and from its contemporary setting/ common knowledge, except otherwise defined by the author.
*02 basic concepts of communication: grammatical aspect (deal with words, language) and logical aspect (deal with meaning, thought)
Similar to word and term, sentence and proposition are another demonstration of two basic concepts of communication.
Rule 6: GRASP THE MAIN PROPOSITIONS: “MARK THE MOST IMPORTANT SENTENCES IN A BOOK AND DISCOVER THE PROPOSITIONS THEY CONTAIN.”
*Notice: Reader should be able to distinguish between properly supported propositions by the author from mere expression of personal opinions.
Rule 7: FIND THE MAIN ARGUMENTS: “LOCATE OR CONSTRUCT THE BASIC ARGUMENTS IN A BOOK BY FINDING THEM IN THE CONNECTION OF SENTENCES.”
*How to find key sentences and propositions:
- Author signs: italics; location
- Perplexed sentences
- Containing key terms
- Belong to a sequence in the argument(s)
- Separate complicated sentences into more than one proposition
- See if you can state the author’s argument in your own words
- See if you can give your own example to make the same point.
- 1. Every argument must involve a number of sentences (Reasons and conclusions)
- 2a. Types of argument are Inductive or deductive
- 2b. In science literature, types of argument are reasoning or experiment
- 3a. Pay attention to the starting point of an argument: reader-writer agreement (assumption) or self-evident proposition.
- 3b. Pay attention to what the author says that can be proved or otherwise evidenced, what he must assume (1) or what need not to be proved because it is self-evident (2).
THE THIRD STAGE: Critical reading, to answer the third and fourth basic questions ‘Is it true?’ and ‘What of it?’
Rule 9- COMPLETE YOUR READING FIRST: “YOU MUST BE ABLE TO SAY, WITH REASONABLE CERTAINTY, “I UNDERSTAND,” BEFORE YOU CAN SAY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING THINGS: “I AGREE”, OR “I DISAGREE,” OR “I SUSPEND JUDGEMENT.”
*What is a teachable reader? – He is the most critical one who criticize with a good rhetorical skill.
Rule 10: Control yourself: “WHEN YOU DISAGREE, DO SO REASONABLY, AND NOT DISPUTATIOUSLY OR CONTENTIOUSLY.”
Rule 11: Present good reasons: “RESPECT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND MERE PERSONAL OPINION, BY GIVING REASONS FOR ANY CRITICAL JUDGEMENT YOU MAKE.”
Chapter 11: Agreeing or Disagreeing with an Author
- How to conduct disagreement well?
- Acknowledge your emotions
- Make your own assumption explicit (acknowledge your own prejudices so as to admit that your author is equally entitled to have his own)
- Try to minimize partisanship (read with sympathy and impartiality)
- Four ways to criticize a book negatively (disagreement)
- “You are uninformed.”
- “You are misinformed.”
- “You are illogical.”
- “Your analysis is incomplete.”
- How to judge the author’s soundness (1~3) and completeness (4)?
- Soundness: only bring up the defects that directly related to the argument. Support your disagreement by stating clearly where the defect is and how is it wrongly made?
- Completeness is unsatisfied if the author is unable to solve all his problems initially stated.
- Completeness judgment is the final step that ties together the 3 stages of analytical reading: Rule 4 (What is the problem?) and Rule 8 (What is the solution?) and Rule 11.
- The Importance of Context
- The intrinsic reading- the context within the book itself
- Extrinsic reading- the context of sources outside the book
- Other books as Extrinsic Aids
- The Great Books in Western civilization
- Commentaries & Abstracts
- Reference books: dictionaries & encyclopedia
- As ‘physical things’ with uniform spelling
- As ‘parts of speech with grammatical roles
- As ‘signs with many meanings’, some ‘totally unrelated’
- As ‘conventions’ with a history of transformation
- As propositions; you need to know its relation to the truth you are seeking, otherwise, facts are useless.
- As ‘true’ proposition; they are already proven to be true.
- As reflection of reality
- As conventional and cultural matters
Chapter 20: Synoptical Reading
- Surveying the Field Preparatory to Synoptical Reading
- Create a book list of the researched subject
- Identify the books that are germane to the subject and build a clearer view of the subject.
- 5 steps of Synoptical Reading
- Find the relevant passages.
- Establish a common terminology
- Clarify the questions
- Define the issues
- Analyze the discussion Look for the truth in:
- “the order of the discussion itself”
- “the conflict of opposing answers”
- Active reading = asking questions, looking for answers
- What good books do for us?
IN SUMMARY:
When you read for intellect (as opposed to read for entertainment), only read good books and great books. Remember to read them in a proper way.
- Good books: there are a few thousand of them. They contain no more than one meaning (message) and one reading.
- Great books: there are less than 100 of them. They have many meanings and need to be read over and over again.
- Great books stand the test of time. Thus, choose wisely, be selective, you have little time on earth. Most books are entertaining. A few are enlightening.
- Imagine you are left with 10 books in a desert island, which ten books you choose?
- Great book: The book seems to grow with you, you see new things every time you read it again. The book is able to lift you over and over again. “You should seek out the few books that can have this value for you.”
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