Reading well can make major improvements in your intelligence , Vocabulary , ideas base , emotional intelligence and your experience of the universe. here we look at some major basic ideas which can make a difference in your reading skills and therfore your ability to comprehend information quickly and accurately. The post is targetted at a test taker and thus the techniques and ideas that are discussed here are specific to expository text , i.e the kind of text you will see in the tests like CAT , GMAT , and other major general aptitude tests.
expository |ikˈspäziˌtôrē|
adjective
intended to explain or describe something : formal expository prose.
Passages and texts in these tests are typically context less, i.e there is no headline like the way there is in a newspaper , the headline in the newspaper articles sets up the subject for us and even before you read the first line your brain has already localized the information and prepped you for further exploration. Your neurons dealing with the subject matter and related ideas are triggered quick and fast enabling smoother assimilation of information.
Some articles in a newspapers are continued ideas like a story going on for a few days , the newspapers which of course makes reading easier still since besides the neurons activated now the neurons needs were probably just activated the day before and thus being faster , to alight to work on the information. Following a test match of cricket interested readers will read one article after the other without any issues. Simple science so far. Plus a story goes like our experience of time so that much easier to handle stories, movies , comics are all stories. Any continued bit of information your brain build its own story.
However in the exams following things change making it tougher than your usual paper reading.
- no headlines , no story , no continuation , you have to read before you even figure out what’s going on
- subject matter not of preference and liking , somebody who likes cricket does not like finance , somebody who lies finance does not understand history somebody who loves history struggles with philosophy and so on and so forth.
- time pressure : the clock is ticking and you are not sitting on your pot and the passage
- The Quality of text goes up :Newspapers are for the masses and the usage of language is colloquial to say the best, but more esoteric matters may be presented using words that you have not heard of or ideas that you are aware of .
- here are questions: Specific , pointed , questions , checking fact/opinion distinction , ability to look for details , ability to see patterns in text , ability to analyze arguments make deductions , notice elements of style , speculate .
This is why that poor readers just find themselves out of their depths in quality english tests and even regular ficion/newspaper reader struggle to ace the subject. And let us tell you that it is an aceable subject. Skilled readers however will manage fairly easily no matter what text presents itself. The need is to separate the skill from the habit. This is not to say that regular reading will not make a difference. Parts of The skills required to overcome the above are bit by bit built and get developed automatically and the skill level should be almost directly proportional to the exposure. As mentioned earlier regular readers do fair better than poor readers for this very reason. Remember it takes regular reading of couple of years at least to develop even sufficient skills. Core reading skills however can be learnt fairly quickly by focusing on the broad major ideas that go into effective analytical reading. Post learning the core skills, regular reading will work in an exponential manner in improving your skills and exam handling ability.