How to Read a Book

1. By Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren How to Read a Book

2. Part 1: The Dimensions of Reading • Chapter 1: The Activity and Art of Reading • Chapter 2: The Levels of Reading • Chapter 3: The First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading • Chapter 4: The Second Level of Reading: Inspectional Reading • Chapter 5: How to Be a Demanding Reader

3. Chapter 1

4. Chapter 1: The Activity and Art of Reading • Introduction • Active Reading • The Goals of Reading • Reading for Information • Reading for Understanding • Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery • Present and Absent Teachers

5. Introduction • Who are readers? • “By ‘readers’ we mean people who are still accustomed, as almost every literate and intelligent person used to be, to gain a large share of their information about and their understanding of the world from the written word. Not all of it, of course; even in the days before radio and television, a certain amount of information and understanding was acquired through spoken words and through observation. But for intelligent and curious people that was never enough…

6. “They knew that they had to read too, and they did read.”

7. Active Reading • When is one reader better than another? • “One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.” (p.5) • Baseball Analogy • Thrower, Catcher, Ball • Who does the most work?

8. Active Reading “There can be absolutely no passive reading.” (p.5) Begins the process The passive, common object Terminates the process

9. Active Reading • So, who is a better reader? • “For the moment, it suffices to say that, given the same thing to read, one person reads it better than another, first, by reading it more actively, and second, by performing each of the acts involved more skillfully.” (p.6) • 1- Active • 2- Skilled

10. The Goals of Reading: Reading for InformationReading for Understanding • Three Scenarios • 1: You get what you read. End of story. • 2: (A) You don’t get what you read, and you get someone or something to help you. • 2: (B) You don’t get what you read and move on without looking back.

11. The Goals of Reading • Scenarios 2A and 2B • “In either case, you are not doing the job of reading that the book requires.” (p. 8)

12. The Goals of Reading • “That is done in only one way. Without external help of any sort, you go to work on the book. With nothing by the power of your own mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more. Such elevation, accomplished by the mind working on a book, is highly skilled reading, the kind of reading that a book which challenges your understanding deserves.” (p. 8)

13. The Goals of Reading • Adler and Van Doren Definition: • “The process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside, elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The skilled operations that cause this to happen are the various acts that constitute the art of reading.” (p. 8)

14. The Goals of Reading

15. Reading as Learning:The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery

16. Reading as Learning • “If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world.” (p. 11) • “Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.” (p. 11)

17. Reading as Learning • What name would you give to the following people? • “Bookful blockheads, ignorantly read.” • “Those who have misread many books.” • “Ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well.”

18. Reading as Learning • The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages… Sophomores The widely read, not the well-read.

19. Reading as Learning • What is the beginning of knowledge? • If someone has to teach us what we know, then where did “knowing” begin? • Discovery • “The process of learning something by research, by investigation, or by reflection, without being taught.” (p. 12)

20. Reading as Learning • “The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection.” (p. 14)

21. Reading as Learning What do these three have in common?

22. Present and Absent Teachers • “If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking and analysis yourself.” (p. 15)

23. Big Ideas from Chapter 1 • Baseball Analogy • Learning vs. Enlightenment • Widely Read vs. Well-Read • Discovery • Teaching = Agriculture = Medicine • The ART of Reading

24. Chapter 2

25. Chapter 2: The Levels of Reading • Introduction • Four Levels of Reading • Elementary Reading • Inspectional Reading • Analytical Reading • Syntopical Reading

26. Introduction • Levels of reading are cumulative. • “The first level is not lost in the second, the second in the third, the third in the fourth. In fact, the fourth and highest level of reading includes all the others. It simply goes beyond them.” (17)

31. Level I: Elementary Reading • AKA • Rudimentary Reading • Basic Reading • Initial Reading • An elementary reader’s problem is to recognize individual words on the page • Mastering this level brings a student from “nonliteracy to at least beginning literacy”

32. Level II: Inspectional Reading • Inspectional Reading I: Systematic Skimming or Prereading • Inspectional Reading II: Superficial Reading • Special emphasis on time

33. Level III: Analytical Reading • Thorough reading, complete reading • Intensely ACTIVE (remember the baseball analogy) • “If inspectional reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given a limited time, then analytical reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given unlimited time” (19)

34. Level IV: Syntopical Reading • Most complex and systematic • Heavy demands on the reader • AKA Comparative Reading

35. Big Ideas from Chapter 2 • Levels build upon, and include, each other • Four Reading Levels • Elementary • Inspectional • Analytical • Syntopical

36. Chapter 3

37. Chapter 3: The First Level of Reading: Elementary • Introduction • Stages of Learning to Read • Stages and Levels • Higher Levels of Reading and Higher Education • Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education

38. Level I: Elementary Reading • AKA • Rudimentary Reading • Basic Reading • Initial Reading • An elementary reader’s problem is to recognize individual words on the page • Mastering this level brings a student from “nonliteracy to at least beginning literacy”

39. The cat sat on the hat. • “The first grader is not really concerned at this point with whether cats do sit on hats, or with what this implies about cats, hats, and the world.” (17)

40. What does this sentence say? • Even capable readers can continue to experience some elementary level problems • Think about learning a foreign language… • Senorita Harrison esunamaestra, y ahoraestáenseñando. • 1st effort- identify/define individual words • 2nd effort- understand the sentence’s meaning

41. Remember Kindergarten… • When you first learned to read, what method of reading was taught to you? • ABC method (taught letters first; no meaning) • Phonic method (sounds rather than letters) • Whole Word method (self explanatory  ) • Have you seen strengths or weaknesses in that method?

42. Stages of Learning to Read • Stage 1 – Reading Readiness • Physical • Intellectual • Language • Personal “Jumping the gun is usually self-defeating” (24)

43. Stages of Learning to Read • Stage 2 – Word Mastery • Read very simple materials • About 300 sight words • Basic skills – context clues, sounding out words “At one moment in the course of his development the child, when faced with a series of symbols on a page, finds them quite meaningless. Not much later –perhaps only two or three weeks later – he has discovered meaning in them. He knows that they say ‘The cat sat on the hat.’” (25)

44. Stages of Learning to Read • Stage 3 – Quest to Find Meaning • Rapid increase in vocabulary • Increasing skill in “unlocking” the meaning through context clues • Learn to read for different purposes and content • begin to read outside of school (hopefully)

45. Stages of Learning to Read • Stage 4 – Refinement/Enhancement • Perfect skills already acquired • Assimilate reading experiences – compare/contrast various authors, texts, themes At what age should students be at Level 1 Stage 4? - Ideally— early teens - Sad reality – many do not ever reach it Why?

46. Stages and Levels • The Four Stages outlined in this Chapter are all stages in the FIRST level of reading • Level 1- Elementary Reading • Stage 1- Reading Readiness (by kindergarten) • Stage 2-Word Mastery (by 1st grade) • Stage 3- Quest for Meaning (by 4th grade) • Stage 4- Refinement/Enhancement (by 8th grade)

47. Higher Levels of Reading • “Only when [a reader] has mastered all of the four stages of elementary reading is the child prepared to move on to the higher levels of reading” (28)

48. Higher Levels of Reading and Higher Education • High school and college reading courses, with some exceptions, are remedial • Aimed to increase speed reading, “effective” reading, or “competence” • Designed to overcome various failures of the lower schools • Graduate school courses help students attain higher levels of reading ability

49. Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education • “Unlimited educational opportunity—or, speaking practically, educational opportunity that is limited only by individual desire, ability and need—is the most valuable service that society can provide for its members…” (30)

50. Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education • “…We must be more than a nation of functional literates. We must become a nation of truly competent readers… Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming” (30).