Making Things Stick in RC

caldeppcaldepp Core Member
in Reading Comprehension 6 karma

I'm seeking advice on Reading Comprehension. Oftentimes I'm reading and i comprehend each word but when I finish a paragraph I think "what the hell did I just read?" It's not that I don't understand what I'm reading it's just that sometimes it doesn't "stick". What strategies do you guys use to engage more deeply with what you read such that it stays in your mind? How do you retain the content of the passage as well as its purpose in the overall passage flow?

So far, these are the strategies that I try to use:
1. "Translation" as you read, like they discussed in the core curriculum.
2. I try to picture it as I read. Any way to visualize what's going on in some memorable way. Sometimes I let people in my memory be visual stand-ins for other people referenced in the passage. All this simply in an effort to make what I read stick.
3. Try to make high-level logical connections while I read. I try (not always successfully) to connect sentences and paragraphs to the purpose I anticipate the author having. It's like trying to give the content a role. I'm attempting to understand the "what" and the "why" (role) while I read.

All this is what I am now attempting but still at times I find myself understanding words but not comprehending the whole.

Any tips from those of you to whom this comes a bit easier? Or, maybe more importantly, from those of you for whom this content is difficult but which you have improved on.

thanks in advance.

Comments

  • thomas.a.fredericksthomas.a.fredericks Core Member
    14 karma

    i was having touble with this and it helped me a lot to start using the highlighter tool. what to highlight is kind of hard to say without looking at a specific passage, but i usually will highlight names of people involved, definitions given in the passage, and things that stand out to me as important to the authors POV. i think highlighting these details helps me to be able to better focus on how they all connect.

  • caldeppcaldepp Core Member
    6 karma

    @Thomas.a.fredericks, thanks for taking the time to write.

    I too like to use the highlighter tool to mark out perspectives. Those are the signposts, the waypoints, I will need to come back to for a number of questions.

  • LSATmakesmeLSADLSATmakesmeLSAD Core Member
    57 karma

    it's good to understand what the sentences and words are saying, but I think it's important that after you read a paragraph you have a decent understanding of the paragraph. In other words, you can boil down the paragraph to its gist; why was the paragraph written or what is it that is trying to be said?

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