4 ESSENTIAL TIPS TO OVERCOME FUTILE AND FRUITLESS READING

Reading is an essential skill for developing the cognitive domain of an individual. The cognitive domain deals with the ability to develop one’s mental skills and the individual’s acquisition of knowledge. Reading is the ability to recognize, comprehend and co-ordinate words to achieve a proper understanding of a group of words (sentence) thereby imbibing the actualized content in aspects of one’s life when needed. Adults and children, irrespective of their social strata, need to develop these essential skills to properly fit into society.

Essential tips needed for a profitable reading session and seamless comprehension include:

• Choose a Suitable Time & Place: Individuals should develop the most comfortable time they study effectively. This is the first step in achieving a productive reading session. The truth is that there is no universal time to read and study effectively because our body system differs. While some people assimilate better during the daytime, others derive their own pleasure in remaining active during the dead of the night to study. Although it has been proven scientifically that the brain assimilates quicker in the morning, it all still boils down to individual differences and their preference. Also, reading in a quiet place is better to avoid unnecessary distractions such as sidewalks, gossip, and even social media.
• Set a Target: Readers should set objectives to be covered within a specific time frame before commencing any reading session: After fixing a workable time frame, the next step in achieving a fruitful reading is to set a target for yourself within a specified timeline. This could mean the number of pages you want to cover within a stipulated timeline. Make sure you are always with a book and keep a list of all the topics you intend to read. Periodically, evaluate your reading speed to ascertain if you have been able to achieve meaningful progress during the set time. It is always advisable that you set achievable targets that would allow you to read exhaustively and not skim through the pages. Also, your reading speed should determine your target. It is not a crime if you don’t meet your target but you should at least cover seventy per cent. Reading targets easily helps to put one back on track when distractions creep in while reading. It also helps to measure one’s reading speed.
• Observe and Understand: the key details and try to explain them in your words: Sometimes books can be extremely thorough and overloaded with information, technical jargon, and even unnecessary qualifiers and modifiers in a bid to make the book bulky. A reader trying to approach these kinds of books with the same thoroughness would not be able to absorb every tiny detail in the chapter. As such, the best strategy is to read for the big and key details. When the key ideas are fully understood and can even be explained by the reader in his/her own words, only then can the reading be said to have been effective. Also, detecting the author’s strategy or thinking like the author when a reading helps you to decipher and separate the tangential information from the main content of the book. Adding personal context or conceptualizing the content in a book also works.
• Review and Assess The only way to test if one has wasted time in reading or not is by administering an honest assessment exercise. This can be done by recounting major highlights or points in the book and elucidating on them. Also, chapters of the books can be turned into questions for the reader to answer. Failure to answer quite a reasonable number of questions or at least have an idea of what the answer should be like, then the reading is most likely to be futile.

It is also advisable that once there’s an observation that assimilation is very difficult at the early stages of the reading, then a break should be taken. Maybe a shower can help or some fruits just to make the body light. Also, note that the right attitude towards reading must be cultivated through a disciplined model which can only be achieved through determination and focus.