address a couple things that came up in a discussion on Facebook

about reading and becoming a better reader.

And so as we kinda went through this thread

online, we were sharing some tips and ideas

about how to improve our reading comprehension,

and so I thought I would share a few things that I do

and maybe this will be a help to you.

Number one when you read a book, and by the way we will

title this video 10 tips to improve your reading comprehension,

and so number one is from

Benjamin Franklin himself and what he said was never read a book

without a pen in hand and so hmm... well, I actually take that to heart.

I hardly walk to a mailbox without having a book

and a pen, and so hmm... if you have a pen in your hand,

no matter what you're reading you have the opportunity to

underline, highlight...personally I like to

scribble, circle, argue with the author. If you read in the

in columns in my book, sometimes I write, well that's a great point

or you're a blooming idiot or whatever. But I

I really interact with the author

as I write in book. And some people I know it makes your skin crawl

to just think other writing a book, but if you want to improve your reading

comprehension,

the very first thing that I would do is take Benjamin Franklin's advice

and never read a book without a pen in your hand.

Another thing when we talk about reading comprehension, uh, number two,

is read a whole paragraph

or a whole section before you

go to highlight or underline something.

I know sometimes I kinda get ahead of myself and l'll be reading through a book

and most of the kinds of books that I read are not...

they're not novels and nonfiction books, and so

their their little bit more uh... technical

or oreinted for study, so uh...

so sometimes we will begin reading and the very first line that you see that's

interesting, you want to highlight that,

and what I found is if you read the entire paragraph first,

a lot of times there may be a summary statement or there may be

uh a little better information for you to highlight

down in the paragraph, rather than just uh breaking up your train of thought.

Uh...so you may want to read a whole section first

and then go back and find what you want to highlight, and I think that'll help

with the some reading comprehension.

Another thing that I do

uh... in fact I do it a lot is I read out loud.

And, hmm, if you read out loud, you will read more slowly

than if you read silently, but there are times

where uh... by reading out loud by reading with inflection,

you were able to have more senses engaged in what you're reading, so

you're not just saying it, but you're also

hearing what you're reading, and that simply helps with

reading comprehension as well. And by the way, I read a study

just today about I reading out loud,

and the study gave some great insights. One of the things that it mentioned was uh...

if people read a list, you know, like a list of

items, and one of those

items was different than the rest, maybe there was a list of 10 things and

it was ten kinds of birds and one or nine kinds of birds

and one was a sport, people would tend to remember the sport

and they would forget the other nine, and so

what it shows is those things that stand out, those things that are somehow

different, tend to make up more than impression

in our brain, so a lot of times what I'll do is if I'm reading

and I come across the paragraph that, you know, is just a really solid, something I really

wanna get,

I'll stop, and I'll read that out loud out, and it really helps to set it apart

in my thinking, so there are times where you can read out loud.

So, never read a book or yeah never read a book without a pen in your hand,

read a whole paragraph per section before you go through and highlight or

underline

at times read out loud, and then also

uh... read silently. You know if we're gonna read out loud sometimes, sometimes we wanna read

silently.

And I would encourage you: if you do this when we're talking about reading

comprehension

read with a pencil read with a pen and simply

check, you know, as you see something that stands out or you see something interesting

simple put a little check in the margin, and that way you can keep reading.

This gives you the big picture a book, and then you can go back through

and look in and pay attention later to some other things that you

you checked but uh... that will help improve your

comprehension. This next one, I think is, uh, something a lot of people just don't do.

And when you're, you're reading to study, when you're reading and it's something

that you really want to comprehend, its not just enjoyment,

uh...something that I do, uh... often, in fact it probably makes me look pretty

silly for

somebody looking in my office or maybe I'm driving down the

the road, but if I read something, I'll

stop at the end of the paragraph or at the end of the section

and I'll think through it in my mind.

And sometimes I leave it talk through it out loud, as if I'm explaining

what I've read to someone. Umm, if you can formulate your thinking enough to be

able to communicate that

to someone else, then it's just gonna

increase your comprehension. And if you do that throughout the book,

if you do that throughout your, um, study,

its... its going to help us significant.. significantly.

So, um... so, never read a book without a pen in your hand, read the whole paragraph first,

at times read out loud, other time read silently, and simply check things that

are important,

explain what you read.

And then, um, this comes from a chapter in a book that I'm going to recommend here in just a

moment, but...

learn to X-ray a book. When we're talking about reading comprehension,

recognize that it's okay not to read

the entire book. Uh, in fact there are lots of books that I buy,

that I skim through the table of contents, I look at the things that

are going to be important to me, especially if it's a compilation,

and I pick and choose the the sections of the book that I'm going to read,

and it took me awhile to not feel guilty about not reading the whole book

and only reading parts of it, but by doing that, by being more selective,

I was able to benefit much more

then if I simply labored through

some things that presented information that at the time I just

wasn't interested in.

So learn to pay attention to the table of contents

and really pick out the areas that you want to

read. Also something that I tend to do

is pay attention to summary

words, and summary words are things like, um,

"therefore" or "as a result" or "in conclusion,"

and make sure that when you see that,

you were able, in your mind, to know what his argument was, what the author's

argument was before he got to a summary,

because if you see a summary word and you don't understand the previous argument,

then you're not really comprehending that, so I usually mark

those kinda summary word. I'll underlined noun

and I'll go back and make sure that I know what the points are

that are leading up to the author's conclusion.

And sometimes we find that, you know, he's made some kind a logical fallacy,

and really the points that he's brought forth can lead to other conclusions or

maybe it's simply not

conclusive。Also

something that I would encourage you to do is

use highlighters or circle and underline

key phrases in a book. I'll tell you I do that

Here's an example of a book that I read just this past week,

and you can see that, boy, I highlight

and then you know I was reading and this particular book is on pluralism.

And so right here's the word tolerance,

and then I will underline the key phrases or the key words

within a sentence, and that really helps to

to stand out, and it also helps when I highlight and I underline,

when I finish a book before I simply put it down to move on to the next thing

I typically pick it back up and go page for page and just

look back through it and I will read what I've highlighted.

I just don't understand folks personally who can read a book

and they don't mark in it, they don't write in it, and

then you know maybe the one key thought, or maybe one thing that really stood out,

it's simply lost in their two or three or four hundred-page book,

and they can't open it up and go back and find that,

and so I would encourage you to use highlighter and a pen.

Also,

when it comes to reading comprehension, mark words

that you don't know. This is something that is

is going to help increase your vocabulary. I recently read

just an absolutely outstanding book called "The Professor

and The Madman," and if you can see the subtitle,

here the subtitle is "A tale of murder,

insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary,"

so it is a book about the making

up the dictionary, so I wasn't too surprised

when there were 35 or 40 words

in the first, you know, how many chapters of this book that I didn't know,

but I went through and circle every single solitary word I didn't know,

and when I was done, because this is not on the Kindle

I simply went to dictionary.com and

spend a little bit of time and looked up some of these words and have added a

couple of 'em

to my vocabulary. A few of these or a little archaic

but anyway, fantastic thing to do, circle words

that you don't know. Finally, the last

is read this book

"How to Read a Book," and, uh, by Mortimer Adler

and Charles Van Doren, absolutely outstanding.

And one of the things that this does

is it helps you to

be able to read multiple works and compare them.

It has the tip about X-raying a book

and kinda understanding the author’s purpose and goal, and

being able to evaluate a book to see it's something that

you want to read to begin with. So,

let's just review those ten tips real quick, 'cause I didn't number them throughout.

Number one, never read a book without a pen in your hand.

Number two, read a whole paragraph

before you go through and highlight or

underline anything, and that way you get the bigger context, and

sometimes can find the conclusions. At times when you need to

read out loud, you read more slowly, but it will help you to remember that as you

engage your senses.

Also, read silently, and as you read silently,

simply use a pencil and just check

key paragraph, so you want to go back and read later. Explain

what you read. Learn to X-ray a book and realize you don't have to

read every single chapter.

Pay attention to summary words: therefore, as a result

in conclusion. Circle and underlined key

words and phrases in a sentence or in a paragraph.

Mark words that you don't know and look them up.

Again, if you have a (Kindle), just double click and it pops up the dictionary, there.

And then finally, read "How to Read a Book". I hope these tips are helpful to you

and happy reading.