Painless Reading Comprehension - Darolyn “Lyn” Jones Ed.D. 2021
How do i read for information versus reading for fun?
Different types of reading
Remember in Chapter Five when I asked if you had ever stayed up late reading a book because you just couldn’t put it down? For most of you, that’s what pleasure reading is like! Your brain is awake, and you are so into the story that you hang onto every word.
Reading for information
Truthfully, not many of you read textbooks for fun, but that’s because they aren’t designed for pleasure reading. Like encyclopedias, they are written to provide the reader with facts and information about a topic, for example, in history, science, or math. You couldn’t learn without textbooks; that’s why you have so many of them! You aren’t expected to jump for joy when you are assigned textbook reading. However, once you learn how to glean information from a textbook, hopefully that kind of reading won’t be so difficult in the future.
PAINLESS TIP
The trick to reading a textbook successfully is knowing:
✵ How the textbook is set up
✵ How to break the language code
Reading textbooks requires a special skill set. If you want to learn and you want to do well, you must read. The purpose of this book is to help you help yourself, to help you see that textbooks don’t have to be hard to read and that you can even have fun reading them. I love the topic of memoir writing, and I read many textbooks that talk about how to compose memoirs. But given a choice, I’d rather read a good story any day over a textbook. However, in order to be a good teacher and a good writer, I have to learn as much as I can about how to teach reading and writing.
And the truth is, reading for information is a skill you will need for the rest of your life! Adults need to read for information to survive. For example, adults must read their bills in order to pay them, they must read online manuals so they know how to put in a new kitchen faucet, and they must read contracts to work at their job.
Most young adults and adults would rather read for pleasure. But while you are in school or college, technical school, or even the military, you are required to read more textbooks. You will have textbooks in junior high school, high school, college, technical school, and even the military. If you have an after-school job, you will have a job contract with rules and expectations and manuals on how to use equipment. You will have to read and know your driver’s education manual in order to drive. Once you are an adult, you will have to read rental agreements, house mortgages, car loans, and even your own kids’ textbooks so you can help them with their homework!
I don’t mean to overwhelm you, but textbooks aren’t going away. As you can see, they might be called something else like a manual, a contract, or an agreement, but it’s all the same kind of reading, which is reading for information.
PAINLESS TIP
Textbooks and other nonfiction or informative reading materials are harder to read than fiction. Remember, fiction is a work that is not true, like a short story or a novel, and nonfiction is a work that is true, like a biography, a textbook, or a manual.
Textbooks don’t use characters, plot, or dialogue or any of the other elements of fiction to tell you the information. Textbooks just explain the information. Now, some textbooks may use more illustrations and provide more examples, making them easier to read, but they are still providing information. If you think about it, reading a textbook could be considered easier than reading a story because you don’t have to navigate through a who is who and who did what to whom and where and why story line. You use your reading brain differently when reading a textbook.
In order to read successfully, you must be brainfully fit. That’s like physically fit, but with your brain. You must ensure that your brain is warm and that you are actively reading. If you nap through your reading and hope that the information leaps magically into your brain by osmosis, you will learn nothing. Your brain will remain a couch potato.
CAUTION—Major Mistake Territory!
If you don’t take the time to learn how your textbook is set up first, you will waste time trying to figure it out each time you read it. And, you may just give up because it’s so frustrating.