How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

by Mortimer J. Adler

  Stages of Learning to Read

  One useful finding of recent research is the analysis of stages in learning to read. It is now widely accepted that there are at least four more or less clearly distinguishable stages in the child’s progress toward what is called mature reading ability. The first stage is known by the term “reading readiness.” This begins, it has been pointed out, at birth, and continues normally until the age of about six or seven.

  Reading readiness includes several different kinds of preparation for learning to read. Physical readiness involves good vision and hearing. Intellectual readiness involves a minimum level of visual perception such that the child can take in and remember an entire word and the letters that combine to form it. Language readiness involves the ability to speak clearly and to use several sentences in correct order. Personal readiness involves the ability to work with other children, to sustain attention, to follow directions, and the like.

  General reading readiness is assessed by tests and is also estimated by teachers who are often skillful at discerning just when a pupil is ready to learn to read. The important thing to remember is that jumping the gun is usually self-defeating. The child who is not yet ready to read is frustrated if attempts are made to teach him, and he may carry over his dislike for the experience into his later school career and even into adult life. Delaying the beginning of reading instruction beyond the reading readiness stage is not nearly so serious, despite the feelings of parents who may fear that their child is “backward” or is not “keeping up” with his peers.

  p. 25 In the second stage, children learn to read very simple materials. They usually begin, at least in the United States, by learning a few sight words, and typically manage to master perhaps three hundred to four hundred words by the end of the first year. Basic skills are introduced at this time, such as the use of context or meaning clues and the beginning sounds of words. By the end of this period pupils are expected to be reading simple books independently and with enthusiasm.

  It is incidentally worth observing that something quite mysterious, almost magical, occurs during this stage. At one moment in the course of his development the child, when faced with a series of symbols on a page, finds them quite meaningless. Not much later—perhaps only two or three weeks later—he has discovered meaning in them; he knows that they say “The cat sat on the hat.” How this happens no one really knows, despite the efforts of philosophers and psychologists over two and a half millennia to study the phenomenon. Where does meaning come from? How is it that a French child would find the same meaning in the symbols “Le chat s’asseyait sur le chapeau”? Indeed, this discovery of meaning in symbols may be the most astounding intellectual feat that any human being ever performs—and most humans perform it before they are seven years old!

  The third stage is characterized by rapid progress in vocabulary building and by increasing skill in “unlocking” the meaning of unfamiliar words through context clues. In addition, children at this stage learn to read for different purposes and in different areas of content, such as science, social studies, language arts, and the like. They learn that reading, besides being something one does at school, is also something one can do on one’s own, for fun, to satisfy curiosity, or even to “expand one’s horizons.”

  Finally, the fourth stage is characterized by the refinement and enhancement of the skills previously acquired. Above all, the student begins to be able to assimilate his reading experiences—that is, to carry over concepts from one piece of writing to another, and to compare the views of different writers on p. 26 the same subject. This, the mature stage of reading, should be reached by young persons in their early teens. Ideally, they should continue to build on it for the rest of their lives.

  That they often do not even reach it is apparent to many parents and to most educators. The reasons for the failure are many, ranging all the way from various kinds of deprivations in the home environment—economic, social, and/or intellectual (including parental illiteracy)—to personal problems of all kinds (including total revolt against “the system”). But one cause of the failure is not often noted. The very emphasis on reading readiness and on the methods employed to teach children the rudiments of reading has meant that the other, the higher, levels of reading have tended to be slighted. This is quite understandable, considering the urgency and extent of the problems found on this first level. Nevertheless, effective remedies for the overall reading deficiencies of Americans cannot be found unless efforts are made on all levels of reading.

  Stages and Levels

  We have described four levels of reading, and we have also outlined four stages of learning to read in an elementary fashion. What is the relation between these stages and levels?

  It is of paramount importance to recognize that the four stages outlined here are all stages of the first level of reading, as outlined in the previous chapter. They are stages, that is, of elementary reading, which thus can be usefully divided somewhat in the manner of the elementary school curriculum. The first stage of elementary reading—reading readiness—corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences. The second stage—word mastery—corresponds to the first grade experience of the typical child (although many quite normal children are not “typical” in this sense), with the result that the child attains what we can call second-stage reading skills, or first grade ability in reading or first grade literacy. The p. 27 third stage of elementary reading—vocabulary growth and the utilization of context—is typically (but not universally, even for normal children) acquired at about the end of the fourth grade of elementary school, and results in what is variously called fourth grade, or functional, literacy—the ability, according to one common definition, to read traffic signs or picture captions fairly easily, to fill out the simpler government forms, and the like. The fourth and final stage of elementary reading is attained at about the time the pupil leaves or graduates from elementary school or junior high school. It is sometimes called eighth grade, ninth grade, or tenth grade literacy. The child is a “mature” reader in the sense that he is now capable of reading almost anything, but still in a relatively unsophisticated manner. In the simplest terms, he is mature enough to do high school work.

  However, he is not yet a “mature” reader in the sense in which we want to employ the term in this book. He has mastered the first level of reading, that is all; he can read on his own and is prepared to learn more about reading. But he does not yet know how to read beyond the elementary level.

  We mention all this because it is highly germane to the message of this book. We assume—we must assume—that you, our reader, have attained ninth grade literacy, that you have mastered the elementary level of reading, which means that you have passed successfully through the four stages described. If you think about it, you realize that we could not assume less. No one can learn from a how-to-do-it book until he can read it; and it is particularly true of a book purporting to teach one to read that its readers must be able to read in some sense of the term.

  The difference between aided and unaided discovery comes into play here. Typically, the four stages of elementary reading are attained with the help of living teachers. Children differ in their abilities, of course; some need more help than others. But a teacher is usually present to answer questions and smooth over difficulties that arise during the elementary p. 28 school years. Only when he has mastered all of the four stages of elementary reading is the child prepared to move on to the higher levels of reading. Only then can he read independently and learn on his own. Only then can he begin to become a really good reader.

  Higher Levels of Reading and Higher Education

  Traditionally, the high schools of America have provided little reading instruction for their students, and the colleges have provided none. That situation has changed in recent years. Two generations ago, when high school enrollments increased greatly within a relatively short period, educators began to realize that it could no longer be assumed that enteri
ng students could read effectively. Remedial reading instruction was therefore provided, sometimes for as many as 75% or more students. Within the last decade, the same situation has occurred at the college level. Thus, of approximately 40,000 freshmen entering the City University of New York in the fall of 1971, upwards of half, or more than 20,000 young people, had to be given some kind of remedial training in reading.

  That does not mean, however, that reading instruction beyond the elementary level is offered in many U.S. colleges to this day. In fact, it is offered in almost none of them. Remedial reading instruction is not instruction in the higher levels of reading. It serves only to bring students up to a level of maturity in reading that they should have attained by the time they graduated from elementary school. To this day, most institutions of higher learning either do not know how to instruct students in reading beyond the elementary level, or lack the facilities and personnel to do so.

  We say this despite the fact that a number of four-year and community colleges have recently instituted courses in speed reading, or in “effective” reading, or “competence” in p. 29 reading. On the whole (though there are exceptions), these courses are remedial. They are designed to overcome various kinds of failures of the lower schools. They are not designed to take the student beyond the first level or to introduce him to the kinds and levels of reading that are the main subject of this book.

  This, of course, should not be the case. A good liberal arts high school, if it does nothing else, ought to produce graduates who are competent analytical readers. A good college, if it does nothing else, ought to produce competent syntopical readers. A college degree ought to represent general competence in reading such that a graduate could read any kind of material for general readers and be able to undertake independent research on almost any subject (for that is what syntopical reading, among other things, enables you to do). Often, however, three or four years of graduate study are required before students attain this level of reading ability, and they do not always attain it even then.

  One should not have to spend four years in graduate school in order to learn how to read. Four years of graduate school, in addition to twelve years of preparatory education and four years of college—that adds up to twenty full years of schooling. It should not take that long to learn to read. Something is very wrong if it does.

  What is wrong can be corrected. Courses could be instituted in many high schools and colleges that are based on the program described in this book. There is nothing arcane or even really new about what we have to propose. It is largely common sense.

  Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education

  We do not want to seem to be mere carping critics. We know that the thunder of thousands of freshmen feet upon the stairs makes it hard to hear, no matter how reasonable the p. 30 message. And as long as a large proportion, even a majority, of these new students cannot read effectively at the elementary level, we are aware that the first task to be faced must be to teach them to read in the lowest, the largest common-denominator, sense of the term.

  Nor, for the moment, would we want it any other way. We are on record as holding that unlimited educational opportunity—or, speaking practically, educational opportunity that is limited only by individual desire, ability, and need—is the most valuable service that society can provide for its members. That we do not yet know how to provide that kind of opportunity is no reason to give up the attempt.

  But we must also realize—students, teachers, and laymen alike—that even when we have accomplished the task that lies before us, we will not have accomplished the whole task. We must be more than a nation of functional literates. We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming.

  Chapter 4 – The Second Level Of Reading:

  Inspectional Reading

  p. 31 Inspectional reading is a true level of reading. It is quite distinct from the level that precedes it (elementary reading) and from the one that follows it in natural sequence (analytical reading). But, as we noted in Chapter 2, the levels of reading are cumulative. Thus, elementary reading is contained in inspectional reading, as, indeed, inspectional reading is contained in analytical reading, and analytical reading in syntopical reading.

  Practically, this means that you cannot read on the inspectional level unless you can read effectively on the elementary level. You must be able to read an author’s text more or less steadily, without having to stop to look up the meaning of many words, and without stumbling over the grammar and syntax. You must be able to make sense of a majority of the sentences and paragraphs, although not necessarily the best sense of all of them.

  What, then, is involved in inspectional reading? How do you go about doing it?

  The first thing to realize is that there are two types of inspectional reading. They are aspects of a single skill, but the beginning reader is well-advised to consider them as two different steps or activities. The experienced reader learns to p. 32 perform both steps simultaneously, but for the moment we will treat them as if they were quite distinct.

  Inspectional Reading I:

  Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading

  Let us return to the basic situation to which we have referred before. There is a book or other reading matter, and here is your mind. What is the first thing that you do?

  Let us assume two further elements in the situation, elements that are quite common. First, you do not know whether you want to read the book. You do not know whether it deserves an analytical reading. But you suspect that it does, or at least that it contains both information and insights that would be valuable to you if you could dig them out.

  Second, let us assume—and this is very often the case—that you have only a limited time in which to find all this out.

  In this case, what you must do is skim the book, or, as some prefer to say, pre-read it. Skimming or pre-reading is the first sublevel of inspectional reading. Your main aim is to discover whether the book requires a more careful reading. Secondly, skimming can tell you lots of other things about the book, even if you decide not to read it again with more care.

  Giving a book this kind of quick once-over is a threshing process that helps you to separate the chaff from the real kernels of nourishment. You may discover that what you get from skimming is all the book is worth to you for the time being. It may never be worth more. But you will know at least what the author’s main contention is, as well as what kind of book he has written, so the time you have spent looking through the book will not have been wasted.

  The habit of skimming should not take much time to acquire. Here are some suggestions about how to do it.

  1. LOOK AT THE TITLE PAGE AND, IF THE BOOK HAS ONE, AT ITS PREFACE. Read each quickly. Note especially the subtitles or p. 33 other indications of the scope or aim of the book or of the author’s special angle on his subject. Before completing this step you should have a good idea of the subject, and, if you wish, you may pause for a moment to place the book in the appropriate category in your mind. What pigeonhole that already contains other books does this one belong in?

  2. STUDY THE TABLE OF CONTENTS to obtain a general sense of the book’s structure; use it as you would a road map before taking a trip. It is astonishing how many people never even glance at a book’s table of contents unless they wish to look something up in it. In fact, many authors spend a considerable amount of time in creating the table of contents, and it is sad to think their efforts are often wasted.

  It used to be a common practice, especially in expository works, but sometimes even in novels and poems, to write very full tables of contents, with the chapters or parts broken down into many subtitles indicative of the topics covered. Milton, for example, wrote more or less lengthy headings, or “Arguments,” as he called them, for each book of Paradise Lost. Gibbon published his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with an extensive analytical table of contents for e
ach chapter. Such summaries are no longer common, although occasionally you do still come across an analytical table of contents. One reason for the decline of the practice may be that people are not so likely to read tables of contents as they once were. Also, publishers have come to feel that a less revealing table of contents is more seductive than a completely frank and open one. Readers, they feel, will be attracted to a book with more or less mysterious chapter titles—they will want to read the book to find out what the chapters are about. Even so, a table of contents can be valuable, and you should read it carefully before going on to the rest of the book.

  At this point, you might turn back to the table of contents of this book, if you have not already read it. We tried to make it as full and informative as we could. Examining it should give you a good idea of what we are trying to do.

  p. 34 3. CHECK THE INDEX if the book has one—most expository works do. Make a quick estimate of the range of topics covered and of the kinds of books and authors referred to. When you see terms listed that seem crucial, look up at least some of the passages cited. (We will have much more to say about crucial terms in Part Two. Here you must make your judgment of their importance on the basis of your general sense of the book, as obtained from steps 1 and 2.) The passages you read may contain the crux—the point on which the book hinges—or the new departure which is the key to the author’s approach and attitude.

  As in the case of the table of contents, you might at this point check the index of this book. You will recognize as crucial some terms that have already been discussed. Can you identify, for example, by the number of references under them, any others that also seem important?