By reading a good book, you can receive
imagination, knowledge, and experience in life. It’s the best characteristic to
get into the habit of because without reading, you cannot get far in your education
or career. The skill of being able to read critically and draw conclusions is
utilized in nearly every aspect of everyday life. It helps you obtain
vocabulary, knowledge, and historical truth, and it comes hand in hand with
your writing skill. Reading is unique amongst other mediums due to the way that
your mind can interact with the creation of the author. Ideas are
easily communicated in an effective, thorough manner. With unlimited
information within books also comes the need to process material faster. With
effective reading techniques, you can significantly improve your reading and
writing skill in preparation for writing papers.
As you
read, you will gradually improve your level of literacy. Reading should be a
source of enjoyment, so it’s alright to read at your own pace; it’s not a race.
Nonetheless, once in a while you may want to read quicker to reach the climax
of a story. Such a skill can only be acquired through time and repetition, but
to master speed you must learn to “chunk.” Through chunking, your eyes are able
to pick up multiple words at a time while reading. It’s inefficient to sound
out each word one by one when your brain already acknowledges the meaning of
each word with a glance. Through practice, you can master grouping a handful of
words at once and improve your reading rate speed within no time. Once
you’re at a comfortable reading speed, it becomes more enjoyable to completely
read through a book.
Reading aids in the development of good
grammar and style. A good book will always utilize different sentence level
structures: appositives, subordinators, etc. When you’ve grown accustomed to
reading the variety of sentences, your mind will adapt it to your writing. It’s
important to switch up sentence structures within an essay to keep readers
interested at all times. You can get your best examples of sentence structures
and style influences from the most amazing teachers: the authors. Readers
should pay attention to how words are utilized and how sentence flow together. It’s
great to use works of literature as simple examples of great quality writing.
From time to time, you may stumble upon
words that you can’t define or topics you may find important. A great way to
keep all your ideas organized is to annotate. Highlighting, underlining, or sticky
notes are one in many ways to pinpoint ideas that you may want to follow up on
once the reading is done. When you come across a word that you can’t figure
out, annotate it and set it aside for later. It’s less productive to stop and
look through the dictionary each time you come across an unknown word. Either
attempt to define the word within its context, or save it for later when you
have compiled enough words for dictionary use. Through annotating, it’s also a
smart idea to mark important characters, plot, and topics. This is useful for
writing summaries, outlining essays, or reviewing for tests. Everything will be more organized, which in
return will allow quicker access for whenever needed.
My professor, Brian Lewis, once said “There’s
a book for everyone. You just have to find it.” Certainly it may seem like
reading isn’t meant for some, but reading comes in many forms: magazines,
comics, poems, etc. There’s an infinite amount of stories to be told and
countless facts yet to be unrevealed. You just have to find the one that fits
your taste. Once you make a habit out of reading, incorporate these techniques.
It will be an efficient tool to get you through school, work, or just life with
time to spare.
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