Here’s some of what I’m doing in my head as I read textbooks:
Simply monitoring whether the phrase or sentence I just read makes immediate sense to me, or whether it felt like a “word salad.”
Letting my attention linger on key words or phrases that are obviously important, yet not easily interpretable. This often happens with abstract sentences. For example, in the first sentence of the pigeonholing article linked above, we have: “Pigeonholing is a process that attempts to classify disparate entities into a limited number of categories (usually, mutually exclusive ones).” I let my eyes linger on the words ‘process’, ‘disparate entities’, ‘categories’, ‘mutually exclusive’. I allow my unconscious some time to float up an interpretation of these words. In this case, my brain starts a hazy visualization: a sense of people doing a task over and over again (process), a sense of several different objects sitting on a table (disparate entities), a sense of those objects being sorted into groups (categories), and a background sense that the objects in one group “don’t belong” with the other groups (mutually exclusive).
Closing my eyes and recalling the equation I just read from working memory. I repeat this several more times as I read on.
Closing my eyes and rehearsing the key points of the sentence or paragraph I just read.
Restating what I just read in my own words (in my head).
Visualizing what’s being described, which sometimes involves coming up with examples. I then use the example or visualization to verify that the argument just made seems to apply.
Looking back over the last several paragraphs, or the entire section up to my current position, and explaining to myself how the ideas I’ve learned about in each paragraph tie into the point of the section as a whole—their individual function, why they’re sequenced as they are, which ones are of key importance, which bits of information are likely to be referenced many times again in the future.
Here’s some of what I’m doing in my head as I read textbooks:
Simply monitoring whether the phrase or sentence I just read makes immediate sense to me, or whether it felt like a “word salad.”
Letting my attention linger on key words or phrases that are obviously important, yet not easily interpretable. This often happens with abstract sentences. For example, in the first sentence of the pigeonholing article linked above, we have: “Pigeonholing is a process that attempts to classify disparate entities into a limited number of categories (usually, mutually exclusive ones).” I let my eyes linger on the words ‘process’, ‘disparate entities’, ‘categories’, ‘mutually exclusive’. I allow my unconscious some time to float up an interpretation of these words. In this case, my brain starts a hazy visualization: a sense of people doing a task over and over again (process), a sense of several different objects sitting on a table (disparate entities), a sense of those objects being sorted into groups (categories), and a background sense that the objects in one group “don’t belong” with the other groups (mutually exclusive).
Closing my eyes and recalling the equation I just read from working memory. I repeat this several more times as I read on.
Closing my eyes and rehearsing the key points of the sentence or paragraph I just read.
Restating what I just read in my own words (in my head).
Visualizing what’s being described, which sometimes involves coming up with examples. I then use the example or visualization to verify that the argument just made seems to apply.
Pigeonholing the sentence or paragraph.
Looking back over the last several paragraphs, or the entire section up to my current position, and explaining to myself how the ideas I’ve learned about in each paragraph tie into the point of the section as a whole—their individual function, why they’re sequenced as they are, which ones are of key importance, which bits of information are likely to be referenced many times again in the future.