reading

• Annotation: A Strategy for Active Reading
  "Annotation is a strategy for active reading wherein you write the key information (such as major points, definitions, and examples) in the margins of your text. You are looking for and marking all the information you will need to remember from each chapter. Because it gives you a purpose, you'll find that annotation helps you concentrate while reading, and it actually helps you learn from the text."
  (Sherrie Nist-Olejnik and Jodi Patrick Holschuh, College Rules!: How to Study, Survive, and Succeed in College, 3rd ed. Ten Speed Press, 2011)



• "The more we read, the more we are able to read. . . . Every time a reader meets a new word, something new is likely to be learned about the identification and meaning of words. Every time a new text is read, something new is likely to be learned about reading different kinds of text. Learning to read is not a process of building up a repertoire of specific skills, which make all kinds of reading possible. Instead, experience increases the ability to read different kinds of text."
  (Frank Smith, Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004)



• "Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own."
  (Charles Scribner, Jr.)



• "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not."
  (Francis Bacon, "Of Studies," 1625)



• Four Kinds of Readers
  "There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hour-glass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly-bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems."
  (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)



• Active Reading
  "Think as well as read, and when you read. Yield not your minds to the passive impressions which others may make upon them. Hear what they have to say; but examine it, weigh it, and judge for yourselves. This will enable you to make a right use of books--to use them as helpers, not as guides to your understanding; as counselors, not as dictators of what you are to think and believe."
  (Tryon Edwards)



• "I believe that reading, in its original essence, is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude."
  (Marcel Proust)



• "Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought."
  (Sir Arthur Helps, Friends in Council, 1847)



• "Some people read too much: the bibliobuli . . . who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whisky or religion."
  (H.L. Mencken, Notebooks) 

Richard Anderson and the Commission on Reading define reading as the process of constructing meaning from written texts.  Skilled reading is

 

         constructive: learning to reason about written material using knowledge from everyday life and from disciplined fields of study;

         fluent: mastery of basic processes to the point where they are automatic so that attention is freed for the analysis of meaning;

         strategic: controlling one’s reading in relation to one’s purpose, the nature of the material and whether one is comprehending;

         motivated: able to sustain attention and learning that written material can be interesting and informative; and

         a lifelong pursuit: continuous practices, development, and refinement.