Aspects That May Facilitate ReadingI. Determining your purpose

Aspects That May Facilitate Reading
    Good morning! Do you have experience of drifting away as you read? It is an easy thing to do, especially when there are distractions around us competing for our attention. While this happens even to the best readers, there are strategies you can use that will keep you from wasting time. Today we will discuss some of these strategies.
    Now, let’s take a look at the first strategy, that is, determining your purpose. Generally, reading can be divided into two broad purposes: Reading for pleasure and reading for information. You are reading for fun when you pick up the latest Harry Potter novel, for example, and you are reading for information when you find yourself hiding in an isolated corner of the library cramming for a test.
    Your purpose for reading is not determined by the kind of text you are reading. For example, even though novels are written to be enjoyed, when one of them is assigned for a class, the purpose in reading is no longer just "fun’’ because you are thinking of the book in terms of some kind of evaluation—an essay test, an analytical paper, a list of quotations to identify. This experience is not the same as sitting in front of a fire and selecting that novel as an enjoyable way to spend an evening. Students also sometimes find that even if they are not being evaluated but are told by their teachers to read a book for pleasure, just the fact that it is required somehow takes all the fun out of it. They still find themselves reading for information, anticipating that they will be held accountable for it in some way.
    Now, let’s move to the second strategy, prior knowledge. Have you noticed how you decide which magazine to read while you’re biding you time in a waiting room? Or have you ever noticed how easy some material is for you to read while other reading seems to be so difficult? Or have you ever been reading something and suddenly realized how the ideas in this piece related to your own thoughts on the subject?
    In all of these situations, you are relying on something called prior knowledge to aid you in reading. You will usually select a magazine based solely on the title because from the words Sports, Illustrated or Mr., you can predict what the articles will be about and that they will interest you. You find some material easy to read because you already know a good deal about the subject and so the context is familiar to you. Your reading is also greatly aided by your ability to make connections between ideas you’ve already thought about and the new information the reading is providing. Your prior knowledge, then, about the words in a title or the subject or ideas presented becomes the foundation on which you build your comprehension of the new text.
    Prior knowledge is a key to getting the process of reading off to a good start. The more you think about and prepare for the reading, the easier it will be.
    Third, interest. Besides prior knowledge, the most important element in reading successfully is interest. As you undoubtedly know, it is very difficult to comprehend and to focus on the material in which you have no interest. One way to spark an interest in any topic is to see how the topic relates to you. Establishing a personal connection to a subject provides you with an extra motivation for reading. It makes you care more about what the author has to say because you can see how it relates to your own life. This approach may sound rather self-centered, but if you really cannot see, on your own or with the help of someone else, how a text relates to you—by giving you pleasure, by providing you with a different point of view, by helping you gain knowledge of something you value or insight into something that concerns you—you will find it difficult if not impossible to understand.
    After that is monitoring your progress. Good readers monitor their progress, often by keeping a pencil at hand while they read to mark significant or favorite passages and to write questions or connections in the margins. This practice of "reading with a pencil" is a good habit to develop as it will help you to assess your comprehension more honestly.
    You can begin by turning all the headlines and titles of the piece into questions and your reading then becomes a search for answers. In addition, you can monitor your progress by asking yourself questions as you read, by noting words you don’t understand, and by underlining ideas you like or respond in some way.
    Fifth, summarizing the main point. List the main topic of each paragraph in the essay. Condense this list by lumping together paragraphs with similar ideas so that you are left with a shorter list of what seem to be the several key points in the piece. At this stage, these key ideas can be put into your own words to form a summary paragraph. Look at this condensed list and search for the common thought or thread that holds them together.
    Last but not least, mapping it out. To create a visual representation of the essay is particularly effective for a visual learner. Having a picture of something in your mind helps you to remember it. "Reading maps" take various shapes, such as lists, diagrams, symbols and imagines.
    To sum up, today we have talked about six aspects that may facilitate you in reading effectively. You will need to discover through trial and error which strategies work best for you.