Who needs to learn how to read?

After all, we all learned how to read fairly early in life, usually in elementar
y school, right?
But do you know how to really read?
More importantly, are you really reading?
Reading can make you a better writer, as long as you re paying attention and leavi
ng time to actually write. But what we re talking about here is what you say, rath
er than how you say it.
If you haven t noticed, competition in the world of online content is fierce. Anyo
ne playing to win is searching high and low for information that others don t have
, which for many means subscribing to a ridiculous number of RSS feeds.
While seeking out novel information from a wide variety of sources is admirable,
it doesn t necessarily give you an advantage. The ancient Greeks had a label for
those who were widely read but not well read they called them sophomores.
As in sophomoric not a second-year college student (I suppose there s not really mu
ch of a distinction).
Scanners and Pleasure Seekers
We know that people don t read well online. They ruthlessly scan for interesting c
hunks of information rather than digesting the whole, and they want to be entert
ained in the process. This is the reality that online publishers deal with, so w
e disguise our nuggets of wisdom with friendly formatting and clever analogies.
But that doesn t mean you should read that way.
If you ve been publishing online for even a small amount of time, you ve seen someon
e leave a comment that clearly demonstrates they didn t read or understand the con
tent. Even more painful is when someone writes a responsive post that clearly mi
sses the entire point of the original article.
While it happens to us all from time to time, you do not want to consistently be
one of these people. Credibility is hard enough to establish without routinely
demonstrating that you fail to grasp a topic you ve chosen to write about, whether
in an article or a comment.
Plus, if you re doing nothing but scanning hundreds of RSS feeds and reading purel
y to be entertained, you re at a disadvantage. Someone in your niche or industry i
s likely reading books and reading deeper to become the higher authority.
Or they will after they read this article.
Information vs. Understanding
People often think of learning as an information-gathering and retention process
. But being able to recall and regurgitate information is low-level learning com
pared with insightful understanding.
Bloggers are big on regurgitation. These cut-and-paste creatives add value to th
e world through a mash-up of sources, right? Maybe, but without the ability to u
nderstand and communicate what it all means for the reader, you re simply passing
on your reading obligations to others, and that s not giving people what they look
for in a publication.
On the other hand, if you understand everything you read upon a casual once over
, are you truly learning anything new? The material that gives you an edge in th
e insight department is the stuff that s harder to understand. In other words, the
writer is your superior when it comes to that particular subject matter, and it s
your job to close the expertise gap by reading well.
You do that by moving beyond learning by instruction, and increasing your true u
nderstanding by discovery. For example, you read a challenging book full of grea
t information, and you understand enough of it to know that you don t understand a
ll of it.
At that point, you can dive into the book again and read more carefully. You can
go to supplemental resources. You can read other books. All that matters is you
do the work rather than asking someone, and I guarantee you re really learning in
the process.
For example, next time you read a challenging blog post and you re not clear on a
point, your first inclination might be to ask a question in the comments. Instea
d, read the post again. If it s still not clear, go do some research on your own t
o see if you can figure it out. Then when you finally do ask a question, you re on
an entirely different level of understanding and can likely engage in a meaning
ful dialogue with the author.
Instruction is important and beneficial. But true understanding comes from your
own exploration and discovery along the path.
The Four Levels of Reading
Back in 1940, a guy named Mortimer J. Adler jolted the widely read into realizing
they might not be well read with a book called How to Read a Book. Updated in 19
73 and still going strong today, How to Read a Book identifies four levels of re
ading:
* Elementary
* Inspectional
* Analytical
* Syntopical
Each of these reading levels is cumulative. You can t progress to a higher level w
ithout mastering the levels that come before.
1. Elementary Reading Aptly named, elementary reading consists of remedial liter
acy, and it s usually achieved during the elementary schooling years. Sadly, many
high schools and colleges must offer remedial reading courses to ensure that ele
mentary reading levels are maintained, but very little instruction in advanced r
eading is offered.
2. Inspectional Reading Scanning and superficial reading are not evil, as long a
s approached as an active process that serves an appropriate purpose. Inspection
al reading means giving a piece of writing a quick yet meaningful advance review
in order to evaluate the merits of a deeper reading experience.
There are two types:
* Skimming: This is the equivalent of scanning a blog post to see if you wan
t to read it carefully. You re checking the title, the subheads, and you re selectiv
ely dipping in and out of content to gauge interest. The same can be done with a
book go beyond the dust jacket and peruse the table of contents and each chapter,
but give yourself a set amount of time to do it.
* Superficial: Superficial reading is just that you simply read. You don t pond
er, and you don t stop to look things up. If you don t get something, you don t worry
about it. You re basically priming yourself to read again at a higher level if the
 subject matter is worthy.
Stopping at inspectional reading is only appropriate if you find no use for the
material. Unfortunately, this is all the reading some people do in preparation f
or their own writing.
3. Analytical Reading At this level of reading, you ve moved beyond superficial re
ading and mere information absorption. You re now engaging your critical mind to d
ig down into the meaning and motivation beyond the text. To get a true understan
ding of a book, you would:
* Identify and classify the subject matter as a whole
* Divide it into main parts and outline those parts
* Define the problem(s) the author is trying to solve
* Understand the author s terms and key words
* Grasp the author s important propositions
* Know the author s arguments
* Determine whether the author solves the intended problems
* Show where the author is uninformed, misinformed, illogical or incomplete
You ll note that the inspectional reading you did perfectly sets the stage for an
analytical reading. But so far, we re talking about reading one book. The highest
level of reading allows you to synthesize knowledge from a comparative reading o
f several books about the same subject.
4. Syntopical Reading It s been said that anyone can read five books on a topic an
d be an expert. That may be true, but how you read those five books will make al
l the difference. If you read those five books analytically, you will become an
expert on what five authors have said. If you read five books syntopically, you
will develop your own unique perspective and expertise in the field.
In other words, syntopical reading is not about the existing experts. It s about y
ou and the problems you re trying to solve, in this case for your own readers. In
this sense, the books you read are simply tools that allow you to form an unders
tanding that s never quite existed before. You ve melded the information in those bo
oks with your own life experience and other knowledge to make novel connections
and new insights. You, my friend, are now an expert in your own right.
Here are the five steps to syntopical reading:
* Inspection: Inspectional reading is critical to syntopical reading. You mu
st quickly indentify which five (or 15) books you need to read from a sea of unw
orthy titles. Then you must also quickly identify the relevant parts and passage
s that satisfy your unique focus.
* Assimilation: In analytical reading, you identify the author s chosen langua
ge by spotting the author s terms of art and key words. This time, you assimilate
the language of each author into the terms of art and key words that you choose,
whether by agreeing with the language of one author or devising your own termin
ology.
* Questions: This time, the focus is on what questions you want answered (pr
oblems solved), as opposed to the problems each author wants to solve. This may
require that you draw inferences if any particular author does not directly addr
ess one of your questions. If any one author fails to address any of your questi
ons, you messed up at the inspection stage.
* Issues: When you ask a good question, you ve identified an issue. When exper
ts have differing or contradictory responses to the same question, you re able to
flesh out all sides of an issue, based on the existing literature. When you unde
rstand multiple perspectives within an individual issue, you can intelligently d
iscuss the issue, and come to your own conclusion (which may differ from everyon
e else, thereby expanding the issue and hopefully adding unique value).
 * Conversation: Determining the truth via syntopical reading is not really the
point, since disagreements about truth abound with just about any topic. The va
lue is found within the discussion among competing view points concerning the sa
me root information, and you re now conversant enough to hold your own in a discus
sion of experts. This is what the online conversation was supposed to look like ac
cording to early bloggers, and sometimes, it does. But mostly, the online conver
sation looks like the unqualified, unsubstantiated opinions of the ill-informed,
and you re not looking to be part of that scene.
Be a Demanding Reader for the Win
Reading, at its fundamental essence, is not about absorbing information. It s abou
t asking questions, looking for answers, understanding the various answers, and
deciding for yourself. Think of reading this way, and you quickly realize how th
is allows you to deliver unique value to your readers as a publisher.
If you think all of this sounds like a lot of work, well you re right. And most peo
ple won t do it, just like most people will never blog or publish online in the fi
rst place.
That s why your readers need you. They need you to do the work for them, because t
hey don t want to become an expert. So, it s your job to understand the complex and
grasp the essentials, then make it simple, easy to read, and entertaining.
You re on it, right?