Reading Assignments: Crash Course Study Skills #2
Summary
TLDRIn this Crash Course Study Skills video, Thomas Frank addresses the challenge of managing extensive reading assignments by suggesting strategies to prioritize and selectively read. He debunks the myth of speed reading beyond 400 words per minute, given human visual and cognitive limitations. Frank recommends practicing reading, setting time goals, and using the 'Morse Code Method' for note-taking. He also introduces active reading techniques like SQ3R to enhance comprehension and retention.
Takeaways
- đ It's impossible to read all assigned pages, and that's okay.
- â±ïž Focus on boosting your reading speed and remembering more of what you read.
- â Not all assigned readings are necessary; prioritize based on importance.
- đ Use Cal Newportâs framework: prioritize main textbook readings over supplemental ones.
- âïž Learn to skim and identify key concepts and vocabulary to save time.
- đ« Speed reading claims are mostly myths; human reading speed has limits.
- đ Understanding how the eye processes text helps explain reading speed limits.
- đ Working memory constraints affect reading comprehension and speed.
- đ Practice reading frequently to improve speed and comprehension.
- đïž Highlighting selectively and using the Morse Code Method can aid in remembering key ideas.
- đ Active reading (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) enhances retention.
- đ Summarizing and taking notes are effective for retaining big concepts and details.
Q & A
What is the bad news that Thomas Frank starts with in the video?
-The bad news is that the little voice in your head telling you it's impossible to read all the assigned pages is correct, implying that the task of reading extensive material can be overwhelming.
What is the good news Thomas Frank offers as a counterpoint to the bad news?
-The good news is that the video will provide strategies on how to maximize the efficiency of reading assignments by boosting reading speed and improving memory retention.
What is the first question Thomas Frank asks viewers about their syllabus?
-He asks whether they actually need to do all the reading assigned on their syllabus.
Why is it not necessary to do all the assigned readings according to Thomas Frank?
-It's not necessary because time is limited, and there are other commitments and overlaps between book content and lectures that compete for attention.
According to Cal Newport's framework, how should students prioritize their readings?
-Students should prioritize readings from the class's favored source, typically the main textbook, and be more selective with supplemental readings, prioritizing arguments over descriptions and context.
What are the physical limitations of the human eye that affect reading speed?
-The limitations include the small size of the fovea, which requires quick jerky movements called saccades and pauses called fixations to process text, setting a speed limit for visual text processing.
What is the average reading speed for skilled, college-level readers?
-Skilled, college-level readers can expect to read between 200-400 words per minute.
Why are some speed reading techniques ineffective according to the video?
-Techniques such as increasing the amount of text processed during each fixation, RSVP, and eliminating subvocalization have been scientifically tested and found to be ineffective due to physical and cognitive constraints.
What is the 'Morse Code Method' suggested by Cal Newport for note-taking while reading?
-The Morse Code Method involves drawing a dot in the margin next to a sentence that presents a significant idea and a dash for an example or explanation that supports the previous idea, allowing for efficient note-taking and review.
What does the acronym SQ3R stand for and how does it relate to active reading?
-SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review. It is a system for active reading that involves pre-reading, formulating questions, reading, taking notes or summarizing, and reviewing to enhance understanding and retention.
What is the main advice Thomas Frank gives for improving reading skills?
-The main advice is to practice reading often and widely with suitably difficult material, set time goals to stay focused, and use techniques like the pseudo-skimming method and SQ3R for better comprehension.
Outlines
đ Reading Assignments: Selectivity and Efficiency
Thomas Frank introduces the video by addressing the overwhelming nature of academic reading assignments. He acknowledges the difficulty of reading extensive material and suggests that not all assigned readings are equally important. Frank references Cal Newport's framework for prioritizing readings, dividing them into 'favored source' and 'supplemental readings.' He advises that while all readings from the main textbook are crucial, supplemental readings can be selectively approached based on their argumentative or descriptive nature. Frank also emphasizes the importance of understanding class-specific needs, suggesting that sometimes skimming for main concepts and vocabulary is sufficient. He debunks the myth of extreme speed reading, explaining the physical limitations of the human eye and the constraints of working memory on reading speed.
đ Enhancing Reading Speed and Comprehension
The second paragraph delves into the mechanics of reading, describing the roles of the fovea, parafovea, and periphery in the eye's visual range and the process of saccades and fixations. It explains the inherent speed limit set by these eye movements and the working memory's role in processing text. The paragraph also touches on the common practice of regressions and the natural tendency to skip certain words while reading. It clarifies that, despite intelligent word skipping, the average reading speed for skilled readers is between 200-400 words per minute. Frank dismisses popular but ineffective speed reading techniques such as increasing fixation size, RSVP, and eliminating subvocalization, emphasizing the importance of practice, avoiding daydreaming, and using time goals to improve reading efficiency. He introduces the 'pseudo-skimming' technique for non-essential texts and highlights the first and last sentences of paragraphs as key areas for identifying main ideas. The paragraph concludes with a discussion on the effectiveness of highlighting and introduces Cal Newport's Morse Code Method for note-taking during reading.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄReading Speed
đĄSaccades and Fixations
đĄWorking Memory
đĄRegressions
đĄFunction Words
đĄComprehension
đĄSupplemental Readings
đĄActive Reading
đĄHighlighting
đĄMorse Code Method
đĄSQ3R
Highlights
Reading all assigned materials is often impossible due to time constraints.
It's okay not to read everything assigned by teachers.
Cal Newport's framework categorizes readings into favored source and supplemental readings.
Favored source readings are usually from the main textbook and should be prioritized.
Supplemental readings can be selectively read based on their importance in making an argument, describing events, or providing context.
The class context may require different approaches to reading assignments, such as skimming for main concepts or in-depth reading.
The human visual system has limitations that affect reading speed, including the fovea's size and the need for saccades and fixations.
Cognitive science suggests a working memory constraint of about 4-7 bits or 'chunks' of information during reading.
Regressions, or re-reading text, are common and necessary for comprehension.
Intelligent word skipping can increase reading speed without significantly impacting comprehension.
The average skilled reader's speed is between 200-400 words per minute, with comprehension dropping beyond this range.
Speed reading techniques, such as increasing fixation size or RSVP, have been scientifically proven ineffective.
Eliminating subvocalization can impair comprehension, especially for difficult texts.
Practice, reading often and widely, is the key to improving reading speed and comprehension.
Setting time goals can help maintain focus and increase reading efficiency.
Pseudo-skimming technique involves skimming for main ideas and slowing down to read entire paragraphs when important points are found.
Highlighting should be done selectively to avoid confusion between recognition and recall.
The Morse Code Method, introduced by Cal Newport, is a more effective note-taking strategy than excessive highlighting.
Active reading involves engaging with the text using strategies like SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review).
Surveying a text before reading helps prime the brain for important information.
Questioning before reading aids in identifying key points and maintaining focus.
Reciting involves note-taking or summarizing, with different strategies suitable for different types of readings.
SQ3R is a system for active reading, but it's not the only way to engage with text effectively.
Transcripts
Hi, Iâm Thomas Frank, this is Crash Course Study Skills, and Iâve got some bad news for you.
You know that little voice in the back of your head thatâs telling you itâs impossible to read all 847 pages your teacher assigned you last week?
Itâs right.
To counter that with some good news, though: thatâs ok!
Today weâre going to be diving deep into how you can make the most out of the time you spend on reading assignments,
both by learning how to boost your reading speed and how to remember more of what you read.
[Theme Music]
First, I want to jump right in and ask the same question that you probably ask yourself every time you look at a syllabus:
âDo I actually need to do all this reading?â
While some of your teachers might object, the answer is no, and thatâs because your time isnât limitless.
In a perfect world, youâd be able to pour over every detail of every book in the world and become smarter than Jimmy Neutron.
But in this world, youâve got other things competing for space in your schedule, like homework, extracurriculars, and marathoning Jimmy Neutron.
There are other reasons, as well â like, sometimes youâll see a lot of overlap between whatâs in the book and what youâll hear in lectures.
So, how do you know what reading to actually do?
Cal Newportâs book How to Become a Straight-A Student provides a pretty good framework for answering that question.
He divides assigned readings into two groups; assignments from the classâs favored source, which is usually the main textbook, and supplemental readings.
You should generally do all the readings from each favored source, but you can afford to be a bit more selective when it comes to the supplemental readings.
Cal provides a hierarchy for prioritizing them, where readings that make an argument take precedence over descriptions of events or people,
which in turn are more important than anything that provides context â like press clippings or speeches.
What Iâll add to that, though, is that every class is different.
Sometimes youâll find that everything in the textbook is mirrored in the lecture slides,
and other times youâll still need to look through the reading assignments, but skimming for important main concepts and vocab terms will suffice.
And, of course, some classes will require you to barricade yourself in your room with 6 weekâs rations and those freaky eye things from A Clockwork Orange to hold your eyes open.
But by carefully paying attention and gauging each one, youâll be able to make smart decisions about what to read, skim, or skip.
Now, aside from doing some triage on your reading assignments, the other main way to get through them faster is to learn how to read more quickly.
We have to be careful here, though, because this is where the term âspeed readingâ
starts getting thrown around and you get people claiming they can teach you to read 1000 words per minute or more.
Sadly, that just isnât possible.
As much as Iâd love to be able to plow through an entire book over my morning coffee,
we humans have some hard-wired limits on how far we can push our reading speeds.
On to the Thought Bubble!
Letâs have a look at the eye.
Your visual range is made up of three areas, the fovea, parafovea, and periphery.
Of these, only the fovea has a high enough density of cones, the type of photoreceptor cell in your eye that can perceive small details, to make out text on a page.
Since the fovea is pretty small, your eyes read text by making quick jerky movements called saccades.
In between each of these saccades is a small pause called a fixation,
and this is when the eye intakes the 1-2 words itâs currently focused on and sends them to your prefrontal cortex for processing.
Both saccades and fixations take time to do, which essentially sets a speed limit on how fast you can visually process text.
And thatâs just for recognizing the actual letters and words;
there are other factors that contribute to a lower speed limit for how quickly you can read text and comprehend it.
The main one is your working memory constraints.
Just like the RAM in a computer, your working memory can only process so much at once.
Right now, cognitive science quantifies that at about 4-7 bits or âchunksâ of information,
which weâll talk about more in the next video on how your memory works.
For now, itâs enough to say that you need to give your working memory time to deal with each chunk that comes in before feeding it another one,
and you do this by pausing frequently while youâre reading.
Additionally, even skilled readers spend about 15% of their reading on regressions, in which the eye moves backwards to re-read text.
That time is split between small regressions due to saccades that went too far the first time, and larger ones that are needed for comprehension.
Thanks, Thought Bubble.
Now, your speed is helped by the fact that you naturally skip words when reading,
and your brain is incredibly good at knowing which ones to skip while still retaining good comprehension.
Studies have shown that while reading, your eyes fixate on about 85% of the content words
â the words that carry the actual ideas â and only about 35% of the function words,
which are the âglueâ words like âthe, and, if,â etc.
But even with the speed boost that comes from this intelligent word skipping, research has shown that skilled, college-level readers can expect to read from anywhere between 200-400 words per minute.
For the vast majority of us, anything beyond 400 is getting into skimming territory, where your comprehension starts dropping real quick.
âBut what about speed reading techniques?â you might ask.
The people that run those speed reading seminars and claim they can read at 2,000 words per minute say that there are techniques out there for breaking past that normal speed range.
Like increasing the amount of text you process during each fixation, flashing words in one spot rapidly,
and eliminating âsubvocalizationâ â that voice that reads âaloudâ in your head when you read silently.
Sadly, each of these techniques has been tested scientifically and shown to be ineffective.
For one, increasing the size of each fixation through âtrainingâ would be pretty tough,
since you would literally have grow more cones in your eyes.
And if you figure out how to do that, I recommend not telling anyone unless they say theyâre from the X-men.
Additionally, this idea still wouldnât do anything about your working memory constraints,
which is the main problem that also plagues Rapid Serial Visual Processing, or RSVP, a technique that involves flashing words rapidly in one spot.
The idea here is to eliminate the need for saccades, but it breaks down because it doesnât allow the brain to intelligently skip function words or to do any regressions.
This has the dual effect of overtaxing your working memory and not allowing you to go back over a line you didnât understand the first time.
And finally, eliminating subvocalization is a misguided idea because that inner voice is actually quite important.
As the researcher Elizabeth Schotter noted:
âAttempts to eliminate inner speech have been shown to result in impairments in comprehension when texts are reasonably difficult
and require readers to make inferences.â
At this point it might seem like Iâm the bad guy, and that your only hope is to get on Amazon and buy those Clockwork Orange eye things, but there is hope.
Like any other skill, you can become better at reading.
The main way to do this is to simply practice.
Read often, read widely, and make sure the material is suitably difficult.
Those dense chapters in your psychology textbook arenât going to get any easier if you practice on One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish â though that is a great book.
Another problem that might bring down your reading speed is daydreaming.
When Iâm reading, Iâll sometimes get lost thinking about a specific sentence and end up staring into space, which wastes a ton of time and makes the other people around me wonder if Iâm dead.
If you have this problem as well, you can set a time goal for the chapter;
when I do this, I donât always finish on time, but it does help me stay focused.
Finally, when youâre reading books that donât require you to comprehend every word, you can speed things up with the pseudo-skimming technique.
Skim the text while keeping an eye out for main ideas, vocabulary terms, and anything else important.
When you notice one, slow down and read the entire paragraph that encompasses it.
A good way to spot these is to pay special attention to the first and last sentence of each paragraph, as well as any bolding, italics, or other formatting.
Looking out for those little bits of formatting will also help you to remember what you read, which is what weâre going to shift our focus to now.
One of the most common ways that students attempt to remember what they read is through highlighting â which, to be fair, is useful if done right.
The problem is that itâs really easy to highlight too much since everything seems important when youâre first reading it.
And this works against you because itâs easy to believe that you âknowâ the things youâve highlighted.
When you look back through your book later on, youâll see them, think, âOh yeah, I remember highlighting that!â and you might decide that youâve memorized it.
But there are two ways to remember something: You can recall it, or you can recognize it.
The danger with highlighting is that it becomes very easy to mistake recognition â
which requires a cue â with true recall, which involves pulling the memory from the depths of your brainâs archives all on your own.
The more you highlight, the greater this danger becomes.
So if you do decide to highlight your book, be very selective about what gets highlighted.
A better idea might be to adopt what Cal Newport calls the Morse Code Method.
Hereâs how he explains it:
First, if you come across a sentence that seems to be laying out a big, interesting idea, draw a quick dot next to it in the margin of the book.
Secondly, if you come across an example or explanation that supports the previous big idea, draw a quick dash next to it in the margin.
This lets you avoid slowing down while reading, which enables you to smoothly move through and comprehend the whole text before going back to review.
Once you do, the dots and dashes will allow you to take smarter notes on what youâve read.
Speaking of notes, itâs finally time to talk about active reading.
This is the process of truly engaging with the text instead of passively just running your eyes over it, which will help you retain a lot more of what you read.
Lots of study books and teachers explain active reading in terms of a system called SQ3R,
which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review.
Surveying is essentially pre-reading.
Before you start an assignment, skim over the whole thing quickly.
Look over the beginning overview, the headings, and any review questions at the end of the chapter.
Doing this primes your brain in advance, which will help the most important information stick out later.
You can actually see how well priming works right now.
Close your eyes for a few seconds and concentrate on a specific color.
When you open them, youâll easily notice that color in the environment around you.
Surveying does the same thing with text.
Questioning simply involves writing out some questions that come to mind before starting the reading.
I actually do this quite often before researching my video topics, as it helps to â again
â prime my brain to pick out the important bits and not spend too much time off in the weeds.
Reading...well, thatâs reading.
That leads into reciting, which is a catch-all word for either taking notes or summarizing what youâve read.
Now, if you had infinite time, you could do both, but since you probably donât,
Iâll note that summaries will be more useful for big concepts you need to understand intimately,
and more detailed notes will be better for fact-heavy readings.
Weâll cover effective review strategies in a future video.
For now, Iâll wrap up by mentioning that I donât think you need to follow SQ3R perfectly in order to get the benefits of active reading.
In fact, I donât recommend many rigid, acronym-based systems at all.
Except for, maybe, SCAR: Stop Complaining And Read.
Thanks for watching, and Iâll see you next time.
Crash Course Study Skills is filmed in the Dr. Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio in Missoula, MT, and it's made with the help of all of these nice people.
If you'd like to keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can support the series at Patreon, a crowdfunding platform that allows you to support the content that you love.
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