active reading

Proactive reading is an algorithm for working with a book that helps you to understand the text more deeply, to find useful ideas in it, to better memorize the material being studied.

Applications

• Self study
• Study of special literature
• Personal and professional development

The ultimate goal of reading is action, that is, ideas that we can apply in our lives. However, the extraction of ideas is not always a simple task, especially when it comes to reading non-fiction. Proactive reading helps to structure work with the book, to make it more conscious, interesting and effective.

Instruction

1. The first acquaintance . To make a general impression of a book, look through the table of contents and skim through it. Pay attention to the headings and subheadings, the beginning and ending of the chapters, highlighted words and phrases, illustrations, tables, i.e. anything that is different from the general array of text. Time: 5 minutes.
2. Questions and goals . Write down what you would like to know from the book and what you already know. This may take the form of goals, if the subject matter of the book is familiar to you, or the form of questions, if you are learning a new area. Time: up to 5 minutes.
3. Trial reading . Start reading the first chapter of the book in your normal mode. Your task is to determine where the information you need is concentrated and how long it takes to read. Time: 5 minutes.
4. Choosing a reading style . Now that you have a better idea of ​​the content of the book and its potential benefits for yourself, it's time to decide how you will work with it. Specify your goals, if necessary, and based on this, decide how deeply you want to go into the material. Then choose a reading style that matches your goals (full / selective / accelerated reading, or a combination of them). Time: up to 5 minutes.
5. Reading Read the book using the selected reading style. In order to better understand and memorize the material, make up on the course task cards, keep a summary or write down key ideas in your own words.

Recommendations

• Remember the rule of alpha-omega: important information is used to concentrate at the beginning and at the end of everything - books, chapters, paragraphs.
• At the stage of defining reading objectives, it is useful to ask yourself how reliable the information in the book is (facts or hypotheses, how long the book was written, the author’s reputation, sources).
• Often advised to mark in the process of reading the interesting places of the book marker. But it is even better not to stop halfway through and write comments in the margins, engaging in an imaginary dialogue with the author — for example, formulate an idea in your own words, ask questions, express your consent or, on the contrary, protest.
• To understand a difficult-to-understand passage, you can ask two clarifying questions regarding it - “What does the author say?” (Write the main idea of ​​the passage in your own words) and “What does the author do?” (Describe the problem that the author solves by this passage - for example , “The author gives evidence of his main argument”).
• In the process of reading (for example, after each chapter) ask yourself the questions: “How and where can I apply what I have learned now?”, “Are there any analogies between what I read and my current tasks?”, “What ideas can I use books? Record found ideas.

Proactive reading has an English-language abbreviation that helps to remember the sequence of steps - SATCHL: See - Ask - Try - Choose - Listen. (Satchel in English - a bag for books.)

Why does this work?

We read to understand and thus grow. When we understand the text, we feel interest and pleasure, and new ideas that arise in the process, which we can apply in our own lives, make reading even more interesting and inspiring. When we do not understand what is written in the book, it becomes boring for us and we lose interest in it, even if it belongs to the category must read. It's like a fire: until it caught fire, there will be no heat, no matter how hard you try. Therefore, it is necessary to invest time not only in reading itself, but also in the way we read, in mastering the most effective reading strategies and styles. The amount of information we consume today is so great that even a small improvement in the efficiency of reading gives a significant gain.

Story

At one time I already wrote about SQ3R, a popular reading technique developed back in 1946. In it, I lacked two steps, which I consider essential - this is a trial reading and a choice of reading style (which is understandable, since accelerated reading appeared later). Tony Buzan, the author of mind mapping, also has his own reading technique - BOST. However, Buzanne does not offer instructions, but a set of different options for action, but I wanted to have something simple, reliable and versatile, like a Swiss knife. I also got acquainted with Shelley’s photo-reading, but I came to the conclusion that although there are many interesting and useful things in his book, the very idea of ​​the “transmission channel of information directly to the brain” that opens with photo-reading is not very similar to the truth. The remaining techniques seemed to me either too complicated or self-evident.