Main focus of this article: The purpose and attitude of reading. What is successful reading.
Two Attitudes Towards Reading#
Different attitudes yield different results in reading.
The first is to acquire information. To know more things, or simply for entertainment.
The second is to enhance understanding. To enhance understanding of things, understanding of certain knowledge, deeper understanding, understanding of the connections between different things... in order to "understand" the world better.
Good reading requires more than just reading#
If the goal is to pursue understanding, then it should be known that reading is not an easy task.
Simply put, when we read a book, we are learning from someone who is "higher up".
Reading is like this: the author puts a lot of effort into writing a book, and the reader also puts in some effort to actively capture what the author wants to express.
The reader should not just be a receiver of information, just passively accepting without doing anything.
Using the example of a baseball game: the author is the pitcher, the reader is the catcher, the author throws the ball with intention, and the reader must also catch the ball with intention - if either party is not proactive, this action is a failure.
In other words, for the reader, if they do not actively learn and think about the knowledge in the book, it cannot be considered as learning through reading. Things that can greatly enhance understanding are not easily obtained, and simply reading is not enough.
For the reading method of purely browsing information, the reader can only obtain information from it, just knowing it in memory, but cannot learn anything from the author.
It cannot be denied that reading information and news can also enhance understanding to a certain extent, but it is not the kind of understanding that can elevate a person's level, a deeper level of understanding.
Reading is not simple, it is a complex activity just like writing, involving a lot of actions. The success of reading a book depends entirely on how much of the core content the reader "receives", not on how many books they have read.
The difference between remembering something and explaining something clearly is very different. Those who read extensively but do not understand are ignorant bookworms (readers). Reading a lot does not mean reading well.
About learning, what is active? What is passive?#
Whether it is taught by a teacher or self-discovered learning, only those who truly learn something are active learners.
"Being taught by a teacher" does not mean passive learning. In a sense, reading a book is also "being taught by a teacher", except that this teacher is the author, a teacher who is not present with the reader. "Being taught by a teacher" and "being taught by a book" are actually guided learning processes. If one only stops at being guided and does not learn and understand the meaning of the words through deep thinking, it is passive learning.
It's like learning mathematics, knowing how to use formulas, but not knowing how they were developed or derived. This kind of learning is difficult to understand thoroughly and apply proficiently.
Active learning refers to learners basing their understanding of the world or things on their own observations or experiences. Reading and listening to teachers are just one way for them to understand the world/things. They will think about the connections between what they have learned and the world/things, striving to enhance their understanding of the world/things.
In other words, the difference between active and passive lies not in the external factors, but in the reader's standpoint and behavior while reading.
The Pursuit of Knowledge#
Having a real-life teacher is a great thing. If we ask a teacher a question, they may answer it. If we still don't understand, we can continue to ask questions, saving ourselves from unnecessary thinking and avoiding wasted efforts.
This is like how modern people know that calculus has already been invented, and everyone can learn the correct calculus directly from a teacher or reference book, without having to derive it from scratch - you should know that calculus is the crystallization of thousands of years of wisdom (summarizing mistakes), something that one person cannot create.
If I can see further than others, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants.
Therefore, in order to understand the world/things more deeply and more accurately, we should seek out teachers. For those who are no longer in school, books are their teachers, except that this teacher (the author) is not present. However, many answers from the teacher are already in the book, it's just that the reader cannot ask questions in person to get answers. In this situation, the learner should think more actively about the meaning of the sentences in the book in order to understand the author's intentions correctly.
Useful Books Are Difficult to Read#
If a book is difficult to read, it means that it goes beyond the reader's current understanding. Such books have authors whose ideals about the world surpass those of the readers. These are the books that can enhance the reader's understanding, and they are the ones that should be read the most.
Without relying on any external help (tutoring, interpretation), repeatedly challenging this book is the process of improving the brain's understanding.
Among those who read books using the WeChat Reading app, many hurriedly finish reading a book, quickly write a book review, and show off to anyone who sees the review that "I was here", and then never look at the book again. Many book reviews mostly consist of reciting and quoting excerpts, which is a form of "formalism" rather than true thinking. There are quite a few people like this.
If a book can enhance the reader's understanding, then it should not be read only once. There are two reasons for this:
- A book that can be understood by reading it only once means that the author and the reader are at the same level.
- A good book that can be understood by reading it only once means that it is not that good.
The way to exercise understanding is to read a book a hundred times, and its meaning will become clear. This is the most basic and important technique, and there may be more techniques that will be compiled in the future, or maybe not~