How to Read and Understand Books: A Beginner's Guide
To learn anything, whether it’s a new language or how to play the guitar, you first need to learn how to read and understand books, especially non-fiction and self-help books that can help you with your endeavors. However, most people don’t realize how many skills reading requires; this beginner’s guide to reading and understanding books can help you put all of them together and teach you how to read any book quickly and effectively.
Use color coding
There are two ways of reading a book. The first is browsing, which simply involves scanning the text for interesting passages. This type of reading is often done with magazines, or by skimming a document for important points. The second way of reading is analytical. Analytical reading focuses on understanding the words on each page in depth, either because you want to understand every detail of what you are reading or because you need a deep understanding to complete your work. If you want to do analytical reading, then it is best to use color coding. One strategy for this is to read each paragraph as its own entity, marking it up as follows: underline all new information, highlight all explanations that are important or relevant, and put brackets around all questions that arise from your reading. Then go back through the book again following those markings.
Achieving an A Grade
Set a target page number
In order to read books effectively, it is important that you know how to read. What does reading mean? Reading is the cognitive process of decoding letters and words in a written text for understanding by the reader. Effective reading means more than just being able to read! It means understanding what you have read and retaining what you have learned. The best way to understand your reading is to set goals for yourself before diving into a book. You can set targets such as certain numbers of pages or chapters per day or week, or maybe even certain points that need clarification on each page or chapter before moving on to the next one.
Skim over the text first
Here are a few of the things you should know before picking up your next book. First, all books have parts that fit into these categories: The Title Page, Dedication, Preface, Table of Contents, Introduction (or Foreword), Body or Main Text and Conclusion. Second though it might seem daunting when you're just starting out, you don't need to read a book from beginning to end. You can read whichever chapter looks interesting or start in the middle. There is no right way to do this but there are some techniques you can use. Skim over the text first by reading the table of contents and then skim over the text itself by quickly looking at paragraphs that catch your eye. If you decide to skip ahead, make sure you get back to where you started reading so that everything makes sense later on!
Summarize the major points
Reading is one of the most powerful, free resources available. The truth is that we do not need to pay hundreds of dollars for college courses in order to learn something new. Rather, we can get just as much out of a book if we put in the time, energy, and effort. To read a book correctly, it is important that you know how to go about understanding what you are reading. That being said, there are three basic ways to do this.
A) Think about what you already know about the topic: One way to understand what you're reading is by thinking about everything that you already know on the subject matter. When doing this, look for any patterns or themes present throughout the book and see if they match up with your thoughts on them. For example, if you have always thought that competitive people who constantly compare themselves to others would be happier when they reach their goals then this would be an example of how what you already know matches up with the information presented in the book.
B) Draw comparisons between what you are reading and things from your own life: Another technique is to think about things from your own life and see how they compare to what is happening in the book. By looking at these events through the lens of your own experiences, you will gain more insight into what is actually happening within the story. For instance, if you had grown up in poverty and then watched a movie about someone who grew up in poverty but was able to escape their circumstances later on, chances are you would identify with the protagonist and feel proud that he/she was able to overcome these difficulties. If you found yourself reacting negatively to the film, however, it might mean that you found fault with how easy they made it seem.
C) Engage with what is happening in the text: Finally, one of the best ways to really grasp what you are reading is by engaging with it. In other words, ask questions and ponder over what you have just read. Ask yourself questions like What does this passage mean? or Why did the author write about this particular moment? It is also helpful to pause after every paragraph or so and summarize all of the major points before continuing.
So go find a book you like and use those tips and help yourself understand books.
Write in it, underline or highlight it, and Look up words you don't know.