image courtesy, Simon & Schuster
This is another post, that is near verbatim1 from the book.
Because, once again, this is reference material, that I need to come back to over and over.
The Four Levels of Reading
They are called so, because they are cumulative.
The first level is not lost in the second, the second in the third, the third in the fourth. In fact, the fourth and highest level of reading includes all the others. It simply goes beyond them.
Level 1: Elementary Reading
Everyboy can read at this level!
This is the most common level there is.
The first level of reading we will call Elementary Reading. In mastering this level, one learns the rudiments of the art of reading, receives basic training in reading, and acquires initial reading skills. We prefer the name elementary reading, because this level of reading is ordinarily learned in elementary school.
The child’s first encounter with reading is at this level. His problem then (and ours when we began to read) is to recognize the individual words on the page. He is merely concerned with language as it is employed by the writer. At this level of reading, the question asked of the reader is “What does the sentence say?” That could be conceived as a complex and difficult question, of course. We mean it here, however, in its simplest sense.
Level 2: Inspectional Reading
This level I do very well, because of the anti-library.
Figuring out whether the book is worth reading or not, is a critical skill for me.
Too many books, far too little time, after all :)
The second level of reading we will call Inspectional Reading.
One way to describe this level of reading is to say that its aim is to get the most out of a book within a given time—usually a relatively short time, and always (by definition) too short a time to get out of the book everything that can be gotten.
Still another name for this level might be skimming or pre-reading. However, we do not mean the kind of skimming that is characterized by casual or random browsing through a book. Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically.
When reading at this level, your aim is to examine the surface of the book, to learn everything that the surface alone can teach you. That is often a good deal.
Whereas the question that is asked at the first level is “What does the sentence say?” the question typically asked at this level is “What is the book about?” That is a surface question; others of a similar nature are “What is the structure of the book?” or “What are its parts?” Upon completing an inspectional reading of a book, no matter how short the time you had to do it in, you should also be able to answer the question, “What kind of book is it—a novel, a history, a scientific treatise?”
Level 3: Analytical Reading
This is the level at what I want to read regularly.
What I want to do, everytime I pick up a book to learn from and understand deeply.
This is what I have set out to learn from this book.
Francis Bacon once remarked that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
I want to be able to digest the books I read!
The third level of reading we will call Analytical Reading.
Analytical reading is thorough reading, complete reading, or good reading—the best reading you can do. If inspectional reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given a limited time, then analytical reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given unlimited time.
The analytical reader must ask many, and organized, questions of what he is reading. […] analytical reading is always intensely active. On this level of reading, the reader grasps a book—the metaphor is apt—and works at it until the book becomes his own.
We also want to stress that analytical reading is hardly ever necessary if your goal in reading is simply information or entertainment. Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding.
Level 4: Syntopical Reading
This level is one, I really doubt I’ll ever do outside of work or research or learning.
That is where I use it the most. And this level of learning is something I figured out on my own, while consulting. Tackling a specific problem in a niche domain, meant that I needed to figure out all the angles beforehand. Figuring what that world was like, and how did what I want fit into that world. Syntopical Reading is very very similar. And like Adler notes, very demanding.
The fourth and highest level of reading we will call Syntopical Reading.
Another name for this level might be comparative reading. When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve. But mere comparison of texts is not enough. Syntopical reading involves more. With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books.
It is the most complex and systematic type of reading of all. It makes very heavy demands on the reader, even if the materials he is reading are themselves relatively easy and unsophisticated.
Feedback on this post?
Mail me at feedback at this domain or continue the discourse here.
P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list!
Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe!
P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit.
Ok, I say verbatim, but now everything is excerpted and heavily paraphrased and put in slightly out of order. You could even say, this is a Syntopical post! ↩︎