Many people find their attention drifts when they read. They get to the end of a sentence/paragraph/page and find they’ve lost the plot, or don’t see the connection between the words and sentences, sentences and paragraphs, paragraphs and pages.
One way to try and correct this is to hyperfocus on making sure you read the words accurately, without letting your mind drift. But I have found this is a pretty inefficient strategy.
Instead, I do better by “rewording as I go.” By this, I mean a sort of skimming where I take in the sentence on a mostly visual level. In my head, I’m not sounding out the words, decoding their meaning, and building a concept in my head. Instead, I’m intuitively recognizing the concept, expressing it in my own words in my head, and then checking that the understanding I’ve constructed is consistent with the words.
Here’s an example from a textbook. I’ll pair the sentence in the textbook with my inner monologue at first read.
The fundamental features of cell signaling have been conserved throughout the evolution of the eukaryotes. <<<OK, cell signaling is conserved.>>>
In budding yeast, for example, the response to mating factor depends on cell-surface receptor proteins, intracellular GTP-binding proteins, and protein kinases that are clearly related to functionally similar proteins in animal cells.
<<<We’re getting an example in yeast. A list of things the signal response depends on. All kinds of receptors and proteins that transmit the message from one thing to another. Nothing surprising here. And there are homologues with animal cells.>>>
Through gene duplication and divergence, however, the signaling systems in animals have become much more elaborate than those in yeasts; the human genome, for example, contains more than 1500 genes that encode receptor proteins, and the number of different receptor proteins is further increased by alternative RNA splicing and post-translational modifications.
<<<But obviously animals have more complicated signaling than yeast, because we’re multicellular. So we have 1500 receptor genes and can make more by RNA splicing and PTMs.>>>
This is an easy mode to flip into if I just think to do it. It lets me read a lot faster, and I feel like I understand it better and am more engaged. Otherwise, I find myself putting my mental energy into trying to construct an inner monologue that sounds like some sort of documentary narrator, like David Attenborough, so that I can try and hold my attention on the text.
You can see that my inner monologue is nothing particularly smart. I’m mostly just paraphrasing the sentences. I’m just putting them in my own ineloquent words and moving along. Not much in this paragraph was surprising (I have a lot of background in biology), and the details I can see are not particularly important, so the effort of reading this is just to set the stage for what’s to come, and to check I’m not missing anything.
That’s good to know. I’m doing a lot of tinkering with summarization. Mostly I’ve done this sort of rewording on the paragraph level. It would be interesting to do an experiment with combining an original text with summaries of different granularities. Then seeing which version boosted reading comprehension the most.
Read by rewording as you go
Many people find their attention drifts when they read. They get to the end of a sentence/paragraph/page and find they’ve lost the plot, or don’t see the connection between the words and sentences, sentences and paragraphs, paragraphs and pages.
One way to try and correct this is to hyperfocus on making sure you read the words accurately, without letting your mind drift. But I have found this is a pretty inefficient strategy.
Instead, I do better by “rewording as I go.” By this, I mean a sort of skimming where I take in the sentence on a mostly visual level. In my head, I’m not sounding out the words, decoding their meaning, and building a concept in my head. Instead, I’m intuitively recognizing the concept, expressing it in my own words in my head, and then checking that the understanding I’ve constructed is consistent with the words.
Here’s an example from a textbook. I’ll pair the sentence in the textbook with my inner monologue at first read.
This is an easy mode to flip into if I just think to do it. It lets me read a lot faster, and I feel like I understand it better and am more engaged. Otherwise, I find myself putting my mental energy into trying to construct an inner monologue that sounds like some sort of documentary narrator, like David Attenborough, so that I can try and hold my attention on the text.
You can see that my inner monologue is nothing particularly smart. I’m mostly just paraphrasing the sentences. I’m just putting them in my own ineloquent words and moving along. Not much in this paragraph was surprising (I have a lot of background in biology), and the details I can see are not particularly important, so the effort of reading this is just to set the stage for what’s to come, and to check I’m not missing anything.
Interestingly, reading your internal monologue seems to help me stay focused. I kind of want actual textbooks in this format.
That’s good to know. I’m doing a lot of tinkering with summarization. Mostly I’ve done this sort of rewording on the paragraph level. It would be interesting to do an experiment with combining an original text with summaries of different granularities. Then seeing which version boosted reading comprehension the most.