by Juan Claudio S. Castro/Contributor
Reading may be a very sacred and highly valued activity for you. That’s quite understandable: reading is amazingly pleasurable and highly meaningful engagement. It serves as a wonderful refuge after a terribly busy day. If resorted to for pastime, it grows up your intellect and develops your imagination during those idle moments of your life. No doubt, reading occupies a great intermittent stretch in a person’s lifetime.
Given these few out of the many tempting benefits you may enjoy from reading, you probably want to make the most out of every reading material you pick. The more you absorb the content, the more enjoyable your reading is. Here are some hacks to help you imbibe information through reading and expand what you already know, all leading to better comprehension.
Pay attention to the title. The title gives you, either directly or abstractly, a comprehensive glimpse of the message of the text. In fact, there are writers who conclude their writing process via providing the title. This means that the title was designed as a window to the entire content of the piece. It usually puts in a nutshell the perception and main idea the author tried to convey.
Detach yourself from the environment. As soon as you start reading, liberate yourself from the demands of your engagements. Focus only to the ideas the text delivers. Think as though the material was written just for you. Remember, you cannot give the same level of attention to everything around you. Simply put, you cannot serve two masters at the same time.
Give way for reminiscence. These flashback moments strengthen the connection of the information from the material to the existing information in your mind. Good readers deliberately relate the ideas found in the text to what they already know. This helps them to comprehend the piece via interpreting every detail using their prior knowledge: they apply their empirical and theoretical learnings to appreciate, assimilate, and visualize the incoming information. You also need to hesitate whenever related memories involuntarily pop up on your mind. Reminiscence, whether voluntary or otherwise, helps you make sense of the material to a great extent.
Consider every reading pleasurable and fruitful. Keep in mind that the text is important to you: it adds new knowledge and pitches into your present or future achievements. In case of fiction, think of the text as a stimulus of your untapped emotions—those that are not normally felt every day. Treat the material as a contributor to your intellectual development as you form the better version of yourself.
Free up your mind of cobwebs. Those flimsy thoughts may be your mental reservations either on the material or the writer. Negative perception of the text may arise from the poor grammatical construction of sentences, loose connection of ideas, lack of appropriate transitions, or the like. Unless your purpose of reading is to study grammar, just shrug off these flaws and look straight to the message of the text. Similarly, you may have an unfavorable perception of the author, which may have been shaped by previously read pieces written by the same person, or even negative news circulating about the penman. In either case, treat every material with fresh feelings—that is, different from all others.
Immerse yourself in the message of the material. Immersing yourself in the material engages your emotions and imagination in the scenarios depicted by the author. This helps you visualize and appreciate every detail that you come across. One test that you are already submersed in the text is if you can reasonably predict the next ideas conveyed by the following sentences.
Try to internalize every piece of information. Internalization is the appreciation of the role of a certain information to the completion of the main idea of the text. Strive to attend to every single idea, including minute details.
Recite in your own words the important details. Do this repeatedly until you are satisfied that the information occupies a stable place in your memory. Paraphrasing of ideas facilitates the storage of the information in your long-term memory, a repository where information stays longer than in short-term memory. This habit is highly called for whenever you are preparing for exams or official activities. Another benefit this act provides is that you can gauge how well you understood the message delivered by the author through the text.
Check the dictionary. Never dispense with this reference. Wordbooks give the suitable meaning of a word in line with the context in the text. The precise meaning of the word leads you to the accurate interpretation of the writer’s statements.
Don’t hesitate to re-read. Reading the first time makes you armed with useful expectations on the sequence of ideas and partial comprehension of complex details in the text. When you read the material again, you are in a better position to completely understand the ideas with the help of the background and partial understanding you just acquired from the first reading. In addition, repeat reading assists the storage of the information in your long-term memory. Finally, this habit adheres to the ever binding principle in learning—“Repetition is the key to mastery.”
Reward yourself after a striking or enlightening reading. This magnanimous act unconsciously conditions yourself to employ similar comprehension strategies toward succeeding readings. What you did in comprehending your last material, be it mentally or physically, would be unconsciously carried to the next text you will devour. This reward system would also imprint better on your memory the learnings you acquired from the material you just read.
Sleep and eat well. Adequate sleep keeps your concentration and focus when reading, while enough intake of food fuels up your brain to proceed in the comprehension processes, particularly, during learning and memorization.
These reading habits make your reading more enjoyable through having the best understanding and absorption of messages. Reading puts the operation of the human brain at par in learning activities and memory processes. If employed, you would considerably assimilate the ideas brought to you by the text. It is never too late and no one is never too old to make reading a habit.
