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The flow of information increases daily. In order to read, comprehend and retain the information most useful to you, you first need a plan to cull the best and discard the rest. To do all these things, you must understand how reading works.
Schema
Reading is more than decoding phonics. The reader brings a lifetime of schema to the text - experience or academic knowledge that connects to what's being read. Schema allow the reader to hang new information on already existing knowledge, as in this case:
"The chairman of the Federal Reserve announced a quarter-point rise in the discount rate."
A reader with knowledge of the Federal Reserve Banking System and fiscal policy would have no trouble comprehending and retaining the information. She might conclude that the Fed is selling more securities, interest rates will rise, that the money supply will tighten and the economy may slow down.
The same reader feels helpless in the face of information for which she possesses no schema:
"Rinse the joint in acidulated water and prepare the larder with suet."
In sorting information, the reader activates existing schema to make the first cuts. In comprehending information, the reader activates and builds schema. Build schema by asking and answering questions.
Skimming and triage
Five steps will get you there. Readers consciously or not follow some or all of these steps. If you formalize the steps, you will gain efficiency, comprehension and retention:
ยท Skim
ยท Triage
ยท Skim closely
ยท Scan
ยท Build schema
The skimming technique gives you a grip on a text so you can triage the text. Triaging texts means categorizing them as 1. useful, 2. possibly useful, and 3. useless.
People who skip this phase, or use it haphazardly, tend to save too much stuff that they really don't comprehend on the off chance that some of it may be useful later. They also tend to throw out things they later wish they had kept.
A skimmer reads titles, subheadings, special text (underlined, italicized or otherwise highlighted words). She reads introductions and summaries and checks all the graphics.
If the texts you're dealing with are books, treat a whole book like an article. Read the introduction or forward or author's note. Read the chapter headings and subheadings, and glance at chapter summaries. Check out the end of the book for a summary chapter, and examine any graphics.
Deciding that a text is definitely useful, the reader sets it aside.
If the text is definitely not useful, she discards it. Someone looking for recipes scarcely needs anything entitled "Fed Chairman Raises Discount Rate".
What remains is possibly useful. It may be obscure (dense and technical), ambiguous (you understand but honestly can't decide) or simply so unfamiliar as to require more investigation.
Don't start on the useful texts unless you are pressed for time. Attack the possibly useful texts by skimming closely. Here's how:
1. Turn titles and subheadings into questions. Consider this example: "Larding a Joint of Beef." Is larding related to lard? Is a joint a cut of beef I might know by a different term? Are we putting lard in or taking it out? Do I want to fool with this?
2. Review the beginning and the end and pull out the main points. News stories present the main ideas at the top. Technical material and feature stories may not be so forthcoming. Academic material usually offers end summaries.
3. Check out special type (italics, bold, highlighted) and ask yourself what bearing these terms or phrases have on the main points. Then check the graphics against the main points. Graphics, as the saying nearly goes, can be worth a thousand words.
Steps two and three should answer some of the questions you raised in step one.
Now decide if the text is useful or not. Discard useless texts and add the useful ones to your pile.
Scanning
You can summarize, or "gut", a well-organized non-fiction book in an hour. Read the introduction and make notes. Read the first paragraph of a chapter, and the first sentence of each paragraph thereafter, making notes as needed. Read the chapter summary. After plowing through the chapters, taking notes, read the book's summary, if any. Your notes comprise a good thumbnail summary. Later, read your notes to improve retention.
Attack an article the same way. After reading the beginning, read the first sentence in each paragraph. You may decide after scanning the article that you got what you needed and don't have to read it in detail. Throw it away.
If you like what you see and want to read it all, set it aside. Go through the rest of the texts this way, setting aside material you will read in detail, but making two piles: easy and difficult.
Use whatever highlighting and note-taking devises are best for you as you work through the easy pile. The difficult pile requires some more tricks.
Building schema
By this time you have familiarized yourself with the difficult material more than you realize: You've built some schema. Build more by elaborating on the questioning technique you used above.
This is pretty much what students do when facing new material every day. Usually, the teacher takes the lead in proposing questions about new material. "What do we know about the colonies? Why do you think they got together? Why didn't they stay apart?"
Forming questions calls up schema you already have, and suggests new schema as you automatically suggest answers to yourself. As you read, you will form new questions and answer questions you've already posed.
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