Reports and Study Material

With reports and study material, we suggest you take a two-stage approach.

1 Preparation

Browse through the material you want to read very quickly in order to preview it. Then decide how much time you want to devote to it and how much material you want to cover. Be realistic about the amount of material you will cover in the time you have available. Factors to bear in mind are the difficultly of the material, your familiarity with it, your ability, and your previous knowledge in the area.

Make a note of what you already know about the subject matter. This will give you mental hooks to which you can attach the new material. Then quickly brainstorm what you already know about the material.

Finally, decide what exactly you want to get from the new material. Establish your goals with as much clarity as you can, so that you will know when you have achieved them. For more on goals, see the Goals Course.

2 Study

When you have done this thoroughly you will be ready to start the second study section. There are four stages to this section. If you feel the need, take notes at the end of each stage.

Firstly, get an overview of the material. This will let you know exactly what it is you are looking at, what you can expect to get out of the material and enable you to focus on important sources of information. Essential areas to focus on are the contents table at the front and the index at the back. These will tell you where you can find what is important to you. If you are reading a book, examine the front and back covers: these will give you further general information. Look at the preface, foreword and introduction: these will give you the writer’s view of the material. When you have done all this, skim read the material you have decided to read at one second per page.

When you have completed this overview, read the selected material in more detail. Using a visual guide, read through the selected material at high speed. Your aim here is to become aware of the structure of the material and focus on the important points. Do not slow down at this stage. If there is difficult material, mark it lightly with a pencil and leave it for the next stage. Your aim in this stage is to build a general mental structure.

Thirdly, you should conduct a detailed examination of the material, as by now you should be quite familiar with it. It is at this stage that you focus on the main information in the material and fill in the blanks that you have not yet worked on.

Fourthly and finally, conduct a review of the material. This will help you to fix it in memory and enable you to resolve any remaining difficulties.

Mastering different reading materials: newspapers

This section is designed to help you devise a strategy that will help you with particular reading tasks. In this part we will outline an approach that you can use with newspapers, reports and study material, to master the material in the minimum amount of time. You might like to experiment with this approach and see how it works for you.

Newspapers

Start off by skim reading your newspaper at one second per page, using a visual guide (as you should be doing for all your reading). As you skim, use a pencil to mark any articles that are of interest to you.

When you have been through the whole newspaper, read in detail the articles you have marked. If you think they might be of use to you in the future, cut them out and keep them. Throw the rest away.

Works of literature

When you are reading (or noting) works of fiction, you can concentrate on various different topics to maintain interest and motivation. Among these are the following: -

Plot or storyline

How important is the actual plot or story line? In some novels, particularly, thrillers and mysteries, plot is most important and character development is secondary. Ask yourself does the plot hold together in a logical manner?

Philosophical system

What is the philosophical system underlying the work? Few novels set out an explicit philosophical stance. However, some raise certain philosophical questions: for instance, works by Dostoyevsky and Sartre deal with ethical matters. Other works deal with political philosophy, such as George Orwell’s, 1984 and Animal Farm. Some deal with metaphysics and ontology, such as Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow and any number of science fiction works.

It is possible to question every work of literature from a philosophical standpoint, because they all assume the existence of a world that is different in some way from the actual word. Ask yourself to what extent is a world that does not exist capable of having any meaning at all? What assumptions do you need to make to buy into the story?

Standpoint

Another factor to take into consideration is the standpoint from which the book is written. Is it written in the third person or the first person? Examples of the latter are The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. You might ask to what extent the words written and the views presented are those of the fictional author (Finn / Gulliver) or of the real author (Twain / Swift).

Character development

Just as some books concentrate on plot development, other concentrate on the development of the various characters. See the works of Charles Dickens for examples. You can use the idiosyncrasies and the catchphrases of the different characters as hooks to remember them and their situations. Other books devote relatively little time to character development. These present more opportunities for you to use your own imagination and creativity.

Mood

Some books are written in a very realistic prose style, including mundane details of the protagonists’ lives. See for example, Remembrance of Things Past by Proust. Others convey an air of unreality, which affects the mood of the whole book. For example, see One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Setting

The setting of the book is its physical or temporal location. What is the physical setting of the book? Which country is it set in? Is it set mainly indoors or outdoors? How does the setting affect the mood? King Lear (William Shakespeare) and Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) are examples of works where the various locations create a mood and relate significantly to other facets of the work. For instance, the two houses in Wuthering Heights are symbolic of Heathcliff and Cathy’s different characters.

You might also consider the temporal setting. When is the novel set? This will determine the cultural setting of the characters and what might realistically be expected of them. For instance, the status of women in Victorian novels is very different from what it is today, and is usually inextricably linked to the development of the plot. See for example, Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen).

Literary Devices

You can look out for various literary devices used by the author, such as simile (when one thing is likened to another) and metaphor (when one thing actually stands for another). You can also look out for the use of imagery, when the author uses visual (or other sense related) words to convey his or her meaning. Symbolic imagery can also be used. A symbolic image is one in which a symbol stand for something else in the work: for example, in Freudian psychology, certain objects such as trains and tall buildings are phallic symbols.

Taking Notes

One other way you can maintain involvement with what you are reading is to make notes as you read. As we have said in the Memory Course, writing can increase general recall by as much as six times.

As you read, try noting down the main and secondary ideas in each paragraph, using one, or at most two, words for each idea. Doing this will involve you in the reading without slowing you down significantly. To gain a greater understanding of how to note reading material, look at pages 6 and 7 of the Concept Mapping Course. There we deal with the concept of key words, which will help you identify main and secondary ideas more easily.

Managing your Reading: Paragraph structure

You can use knowledge of paragraph structure to make better decisions about where specifically to direct your attention as you read. Just as you do not need to read every single word with the same degree of attention, the same with paragraphs. Some are more important than others, and you can use your knowledge of the different types of paragraph to decide where to concentrate: -

Explanatory paragraphs

An explanatory paragraph will typically start with the idea to be explained. The middle section will link the ideas in what is hopefully a logical manner. The final sentence will be some sort of conclusion. Explanatory paragraphs are relatively important and therefore you should devote a high degree of attention to them.

Descriptive paragraphs

These are subsidiary to explanatory paragraphs. They may reiterate the same idea with an aim of increasing comprehension. Alternatively, they may provide an example to demonstrate the idea, which, if you already understand the concept under discussion, you might want to skip over.

Concluding paragraphs

Coming at the end of a sequence, these will summarise the main ideas or arguments under discussion, and maybe give you an idea of the writer’s opinion. These can, therefore, be very important.

Making sure that you focus on the different types of paragraph as you read will maintain your involvement with the material and thereby increase your understanding.

Managing your reading: Content

One of the main ways that you can get more out of your reading is to increase your understanding of what is being said. Lack of understanding can lead to a decrease in motivation to read, and thus a reduction in understanding and speed. You may get bogged down and not want to pursue your reading any further.

There are various different levels at which any piece of writing can be understood (or misunderstood):

Letter recognition

The most basic level of understanding is the recognition of the characters that make up the words being used. We assume that you are already able to do this to a high level or you would not be reading this now. However, implicit in this is an assumption that you can actually see what you are reading. If your eyes are not up to the task, then you will find that your understanding is limited. If you think that your eyesight is defective in any way, we suggest that you consult an optician.

Word recognition

The next level of understanding is that of individual words: you may find that your understanding is limited by a poor knowledge of the English language. If so, we suggest that you consult the Vocabulary Course, which will help you broaden your overall vocabulary and gain an understanding of the construction of a large number of English words that are based on foreign words.

Meaning

Moving on to a higher level of meaning, we come to an understanding of what the words you are reading actually mean. A full discussion of this would take a book by itself and still be incomplete. We merely summarise a number of points to bear in mind: -

* The writer is trying to convey some sort of idea to the reader. Is this idea stated explicitly in the text? That is, is it literal? If not, how do we know what the writer is trying to say. Is it implied? If it is implied, why is that the case? Is there a reason for not stating it explicitly? Perhaps because the idea is considered too obvious to state. The writer may assume a degree of common knowledge with the reader. However, the writer’s experience of the world will inevitably be different from the reader’s, so this assumption may be misplaced. If you don’t understand something because your assumptions differ from the writer’s, don’t be afraid to challenge the author’s view of the world.

* Remember, also, that whether the meaning is express or implied has no bearing on whether or not it is true. Many people are inclined to believe what they read merely because it is in print. This is not the case.

* Another reason that an idea may not be expressed explicitly is that the author may be lacking confidence about the idea, or may be embarrassed. Bear this in mind when reading and consider whether this has any impact on the writer’s credibility. Alternatively, it may be the case that the author hasn’t thought to question his assumptions. We all live by assumptions that we don’t challenge. Life would be too complicated if we constantly challenged every assumption that we lived by. But sometimes doing so can be fruitful. For instance, by challenging everyone’s assumptions about the inflexibility of time and space, Einstein came up with his theories of relativity.

A good approach to understanding at this level of meaning is to adopt a critical and questioning approach. As you read, question what the author is saying. Does what he says make sense? Has he adopted any underlying assumptions? Is he assuming certain knowledge on the reader’s part? If so, what? Taking such an approach will increase your emotional and logical involvement with your reading and make it more memorable. If you have completed the Memory Course you will know that you can increase your chances of remembering something by involving your whole brain. Switching on your critical faculties will do this. You will find more about critical thinking in the Logical Thinking Course.

Managing Your Reading

The aim of this section is to give you various strategies to help you manage your reading, so that you can better decide how to direct your attention; what to read and what to ignore; and how to be in the best position to put what you read to good use. You can use the strategies here with all different types of reading tasks, including novels, books, articles, study material, letters and reports.

We are going to look at ways of increasing your understanding of what you are reading, including the importance of previewing, broadening your vocabulary and getting a grip on the structure and logic of what is being presented. We will also look at paragraph structure and show how you can use knowledge of this to decide the relative importance of what is being said, what to read and what to skip over.

For reading material that you will want to use as a source of knowledge, such as reports and study material, we will give you advice on how best to approach reading it.