Journal For Class English Learning Skills in Academic Contexts
This week, we talked about how to be an active and critical reader in the class. I think it could be called effective reading which is more and more important in modern society. So I’d like to gather the relevant material and reflect on my own reading habit.
In the textbook, there are six reading habits which are offered by Harvard University. But I don’t think they are suitable for everyone. So I will try to develop a new series of reading habit with the old ones.
Firstly, previewing is useful while reading a new book, however, just looking around the text is not enough. Maybe I could do more before reading a book in detail. So why not establish a knowledge graph before reading? As I am a coder, I will build a knowledge graph with javascript, a script language which is always used in data visualization. With the knowledge graph, I can find out the relations among many books and the book which I hava not yet read. In this way, I will know more backgrounds about the book and it may help me comprehend the book better.
Secondly, annotating is also a good reading habit. It is important for us to highlight the useful point and it will be more easy for us to review what the book talked about after a period of time.
Thirdly, outlining, summarizing and analyzing are significant for us to understand the essence of the book. Outlining help us get the architecture of the book. Summarizing is the way for us to retell the book. As for analyzing, I can comprehend the book in my own perspective.
Fourthly, looking for repetitions and patterns is also mentioned. But I don’t think this is suitable for me while reading a book. It is so complicated to find out the repetitions and patterns that too much time will be spent. And it may make me feel boring. So it is not a good idea to spend too much time looking for repetitions and patterns.
Fifthly, contextualizing is another useful skill while reading especially in some difficult parts of a book. Contextualizing will be helpful to understand some sentences or paragraphs, but it will not be a good idea to depend on it at any time. As it could lead to fragmented understanding.
At last, comparing and contrasting, which is the most important in my view, is useful in any book. And knowledge graph can also be used here, because it is a intuitive way for us to describe the differences and analogies among books. For example, Atlas Shrugged and Fountain are both written by Ayn Rand. But they were not finished at the same time, after comparing the two books, we can find out the author’s change of thought.
Effective reading is also referred in modern society, with the skills above, I am sure I can do better while reading.