Three Ways to Improve Your Reading
“Better Communication for Smart People”, the slogan of this website, is not just about writing better.
It is also about reading better.
Readers are leaders, so it pays to be able to read better.
And this got me to wondering something: What are three recommendations that I would make to anyone who wants to improve his or her reading skills?
The answer? 1. Listen more! 2. Watch more! 3. Discuss more!
1. Listen more!
You can improve your reading skills by listening more, which is made possible by audio-books, podcasts, and the Amazon Kindle.
I recommend that you try reading a book and then getting and listening to the audio-book version. You might be surprised at what you missed during your reading. And the audio-book narrator’s style can open your mind to a new interpretation of what you read. Audio-books are available at Amazon.com and other websites.
Many book, magazine-article, and blog authors release podcasts about their work. Blog authors such as Grammar Girl popularized this format. Magazine and book publishers jumped into the fray with their own article out-takes, book excerpts, and author interviews in the form of audio files that can be downloaded to and then played on portable music players.
What I find very interesting about the Amazon Kindle is that you can listen to an author’s words through the Kindle’s text-to-speech function. While the synthetic voice is not going to win any oratorical awards, it does let you close your eyes and focus on what the author is saying — instead of on the oratorical skills of the narrator. If you have a Kindle, try reading a chapter and then “playing” it while your eyes are shut. What you hear could be very different than what you read.
2. Watch more!
You can improve your reading skills by watching more, which is made possible by movies, TV interviews and biographies, and Web-based video clips.
When a movie based on a book is released, watch it in the cinema or on DVD after you read the book. You probably will not get much benefit from this exercise when you perform it the first time. But the experience will train you to pay closer attention the next time that you read a book before you watch the movie on which it is based. You should find that you are converting scenes in each book into visualizations of how they will be portrayed in the to-be-watched movie. And these visualization efforts will strengthen your reading comprehension skills.
When you know that a book author is going to be interviewed or covered in a biography on television, read at least one of his or her books prior to watching the TV program. Think while reading the book about what you would want to ask the author about that book. Then compare what you wanted to ask to what the interviewer or biographer covers in the TV program and to what the author says about the book.
Web-based video clips are becoming increasingly popular with the advent of YouTube and other video-hosting websites. You can now find video clips made by other readers of many popular books. For example, a recent search for “the da vinci code book review” (without the quotation marks) at YouTube returned 253 matching video clips. Try reading a book and then watching video clips like these from fellow readers of that book, to see whether your understanding or take on the book matches the perspective of others.
3. Discuss more!
You can improve your reading skills by discussing more, which is made possible by book clubs, online forums, and public events.
Book clubs represent one of the most popular ways for people to discuss books. The approach is simple: someone picks a book; everyone in the book club reads it; and, the book-club members assemble to discuss the book. Some book clubs focus on anything fictional; other clubs focus on non-fiction books. And some even focus on particular topics, such as politics, or on particular authors. But all book clubs give their members two big benefits: (1) each member gets to hear what the others think about a book that every member read; and, (2) each member is forced, encouraged, or at least given the opportunity to articulate his or her opinion about the book. This second benefit helps to teach members to pay close attention to what they read.
Online forums have become an online supplement to or replacement for book clubs, at least for some people. Book and Reading Forums, which calls itself “An Online Community for Book Lovers”, and Book Club Forum, a UK-based website, are two popular examples of online forums about books. Online forums let you interact with people all over the world, something that you cannot do with a local book club. Although online forums lack the spontaneity that is possible in a book-club meeting, they let participants craft their words carefully. This encourages participants to re-read book passages before posting a strong opinion or quoting something.
I recommend public events as a third way for you to discuss more of what you read. Public events include discussion groups at bookstores and in public libraries. These public events are like book clubs in that they are local. But they are like online forums in that they tend to assemble more strangers than acquaintances. So library- and bookstore-based book-discussion groups can be a valuable way to improve your reading skills, even if you are at the mercy of the event organizers for dates, times, and locations.
