Speed reading. How to quickly absorb information, knowing the structure of the text / SmartProgress Blog

Knjazh February 15, 2017 at 04:29

Speed reading. How to quickly absorb information, knowing the structure of the text

Tutorial

Image by: John Kenn

Knowing how to write some kinds of works, you can make it easier to read them. This is especially useful if the time for exploring the material is limited.
Before any reading, it is important to set a goal, for example, to enjoy a fiction book or to find out some information from a scientific article. Setting goals together with knowledge of the structure of this type of text will help you quickly find the information you need.

Almost everything that we read can be attributed to one of the three structural schemes of the text:

Documentary and popular science format.
Art format.
Format of articles and news.

These formats will be discussed in the article.

Non-fiction and non-fiction

Non-fiction and non-fiction literature refers to a descriptive format. It consists of three parts: introduction, development, conclusion. This also includes thematic articles in the media, essays, books and textbooks.

If we are limited in time, then most likely, taking up a non-fiction or documentary book, we will look at its beginning and end. And this is true, because the most important information is there.

Usually, at the beginning of a book, the author raises a topic or question and expresses the main idea of the book. Then the topic develops, and in the end, reasonable conclusions are proposed. Reading the textbook, you can see that this structure repeats itself, and it repeats itself more than once.

Often the introduction or the first chapter sets out a thesis or idea, and the structure of the chapter will be in the same formula: idea, development and conclusion. In the remaining chapters, the main idea or idea will be developed with the help of proofs and refutations of various facts and theories. The final chapter or epilogue will summarize all the main ideas of the author and summarize.

Of course, when reading a book or a chapter as a whole, we will learn more information than when reading only the beginning and the end. Otherwise, the middle of the book could be removed during editing. And sometimes it’s impossible to say for sure that for all books the structure will be unified. Some books in the main part contain step-by-step development of complex ideas, while others contain unimportant illustrations and examples.

But in any case, with a limited time, information will be enough even after reading the beginning and end of the material. But for this it is necessary to determine the purpose of reading, then it will be possible to develop a plan for obtaining information.

For example, reading a popular science book on hereditary diseases , we set ourselves the goal of learning more about the causes of their occurrence.

We go over the table of contents, so it will be possible to determine in which part of the material the information we are interested in. Having decided on the place of search, we read the beginning, open the middle and see if it contains useful information or if this part is devoted to lengthy reasoning, and then we get acquainted with the conclusions at the end.

For a general acquaintance with the material, this will be enough, everything will depend on the necessary depth of study of the material.

Before reading the book, take a few minutes to determine the purpose of reading, in the future it will help to quickly get the necessary information.

Fiction

Most fiction is easier to read and more accessible to most readers, as it is based on human experience, but it is not so in relation to the structure of the text.

Despite the simplicity of reading and understanding, fiction has a complex structure and organization. Popular science and documentary texts are written to convey information, but fiction is a form of art. The purpose of fiction is not to teach something, but to give a sense of the sensory experience of the heroes of the book.

The story is the story of one character who gets into a mess and tries to get out of it.

The basic structure of artwork is one or more characters, they have problems with which they are trying to do something. Then the plot gets complicated and the characters get into trouble, and after that the situation is resolved.

Such a structure is characteristic not only of short stories, but also of novels. It occurs inside the chapters of works, can overlap and overlap: one character has his own problem, the other has his own.

Knowledge of the structure of fiction is unlikely to help increase reading speed, but can increase its effectiveness.

For me, in reading fiction, one goal is to have fun. It is not possible to use speed reading methods, since they do not allow savoring individual moments of the works.

We read articles and news almost instantly

Many feel obligated to read all articles - from the first to the last line, some even open them in new tabs or save them in bookmarks - hoping that then there will be time to read it. Over time, this array of articles becomes huge, and can even ruin our mood - we can begin to feel guilty for not reading, or consider ourselves obligated to read them.

There is nothing good about it.

One of the reasons for quick reading of articles is the presence of background knowledge: the more knowledge on the topic, the faster you can read the material. In many article sources, information is updated - fundamentally new types of data rarely appear there. Most often, this is simply an update to existing ones or an addition to what has been described previously.

Thus, reading the same source day by day, we increase our background base.

Another reason for quickly reading articles is their structure. Most articles are thematic, this can be determined by sources or sections.

For thematic articles, the structure of non-fiction and non-fiction literature with a clearly defined introduction and conclusion is most often characteristic, and therefore the methods of reading non-fiction literature are also suitable for thematic articles.

Reading the news has a different purpose - to find out the latest events, the reaction to them and the opinion about what happened. News is the fastest-read format. These are messages on the first page of news and information sites and most of this information will be outdated by tomorrow. Sometimes they may not lose relevance for several days or even weeks.

The news structure is an inverted pyramid: the most important information is at the beginning, and everything that follows is less significant. Thanks to this structure, it is easiest to capture the attention of the reader, and any news item can be shortened after the first paragraph or in any other place without losing any informational value.

In news articles, all the important information is in the first few paragraphs.

Do not confuse news and non-fiction articles, they may be similar, but the latter have information at the beginning and end, as well as thematic ones. In news materials, you can go over the first paragraphs and move on without fear of missing out on something useful.

This concludes the series of articles on Peter Kamp's Speed Reading. Those who are interested in learning speed reading are invited to the Smartprogress theme group , I will help you with the study in it and you can get community support.