Are You a Wrong Reader?

How do you read?

It’s not just knowing the alphabet and reading the grouped letters as words. We are talking about your general attitude towards reading. Do you read almost anything or are you a choosy reader? What kinds of material do you prefer: books, magazines, online journals? What compose your things-to-read list: fiction, non-fiction, self-help stuff?

To be more specific, which “wrong reader” are you?

1. The RSS Feed Scanner – you just skim through stuff then understand only a little, if at all, at the end. That’s like reading for the sake of reading. Skimming as a practice lets you miss out on some valuable content to read.
2. The Pleasure Reader – you are only interested in reading what interests you and disregard most other stuff. It’s discrimination of a different kind. Again, you never know what gems you let slip through your hands.
3. The Info Hoard – you are big on info-gathering. Big on understanding is a different matter altogether. “The material that gives you an edge in the insight department is the stuff that’s harder to understand…You do that by moving beyond learning by instruction, and increasing your true understanding by ..” (Copyblogger.com) You tend to forget to digest what you chew.
4. The Reader Without a Cause – like the scanner, you have nothing really in mind to read. “Skilled readers do not read blindly, but purposely. They have an agenda, goal, or objective” (criticalthinking.org). At least be a Pleasure Reader by choosing topics you’d like to focus on when scanning RSS feeds, and then you can improve and move on to the understanding part.

 

Next time, it’s better to be a purpose-driven, critical-thinking reader.

 

 

RESOURCES:  Copyblogger.com, criticalthinking.org