Man, I was just noticing that I read funny. I can’t believe it JUST NOW dawned on me, but I read backwards, sentence by sentence. I read bottom to top. I take paragraphs in reverse order and then put them in forward order… in books, I just do this to paragraphs, but online, I do it to the entire article/paper, taking each paragraph itself from bottom to top and then reversing those.
As such, I may get the point of a paragraph correct but I get the inflections and meaning all wrong. This can lead to confusion and would explain a lot. However, I tried reading top to bottom earlier, and for some reason, I couldn’t get through the whole peice without trailing off and reading something else entirely …from bottom to top.
Is this common? I’ve never done any research on how people read. The closest is probably “How We Think” by Dewey. Can anyone recommend me a good book to read backwards?
Does anyone else have strange methods of parsing text?
Well it’s not hard to believe…actually. I go into reading with the intention to comprehend, I start off top to bottm but my mind migrates bottom to top without me noticing.
I think I read normal for the most part. I often find myself reading an article from the end forward though…if that is what you’re meaning. I don’t read it completely backwards though. I read it sentence for sentence, I just start at the end and work my way to the beginning.
I’ve always done that. Especially in magazines…I never start out in the front, i always open it from the back, and go that way.
I do the same thing sort of. If it’s longish I try to start out at the beginning to get a feel for the author’s writing/thinking style, and then once I’ve got that, I start skimming the last sentences in each paragraph, sometimes skipping all around the document in no particular order, just looking to snag on the ‘meat’ that shrinks the main point(s) of the paper into one or a few sentences.
It’s sort of a ‘cut to the chase’ or ‘get to the point’ or ‘draw up a quick outline’ method of reading. It prevents one from wasting a whole bunch of time reading a paper that, when boiled down, isn’t really saying anything worth reading – if after my ‘skimming’ I find the points interesting, I’ll go back and read it in more detail, assuming the ‘filler’ actually helps develop from one idea to the next, and isn’t just a bunch of jibber jabber. Unless it’s /entertaining/ jibber jabber, then I might read it.
Man, if you don’t have time to read an article in its entirenty then you need to losen up your schedule.
The only thing that can possibly be weird about the way I read is that I look at every single word and usually say them in my head, whereas alot of people I know who read skim over the page and absorb the words and put together the main ideas.
Honestly! There’s no right or wrong way of reading anything. So long as you get the jist of whatever you’re reading, right, you’re fine. Some people will give the whole thing a glance first, just to get an idea of what the person is trying to say and then read word by word. Some will start from the beginning until they complete the whole thing. And yet others might just skim through and reach the right conclusion, mind you, because they may have previous knowlege and so, reading word for word is unnecessary etc.
Guest, there’s a perfect book to read from the beginning to the end, from the ending to the beginning, start from the middle, from wherever you want, and continue in whatever way you wish, as it is the purpose of this book to be read so, it’s a novel of novels, my favourite: The Dictionary of Khazars, by Milorad Pavic. It was translated into English, so no problem.
when you’ve read it, I’ll be glad to hear your opinion on it.
What do you guys think about people who can comprehend pages by just looking at them for no more than a second or two. If you think about it…it makes sense. The way we were trained to read is word by word. Think about reading out loud in grade school. It was word by word to learn the words. We are capable of “speed reading” whole pages at a time if we could break how we were trained. Any thoughts?
Saw that this morning. I’ve said it before…for all you want to talk about United and their international profile http://www.educations.h12.ru/, they really seem to do business the right way. I’m interested to see just how much Kenyon had to do with these results, so next year will be interesting.
