Reading Key Concepts

Synthesis

Putting puzzle together of smaller ideas and seeing the big picture. Helps retain info and use it later.

Skim

Quickly look over text to get the gist/essence of entire text. Like a superficial read. Set purpose, read quickly.

Saccade

Rapid eye movements when reading. When you move from one fixed spot to another. Essentially blind in between.

Phrase Reading

Read phrases and infer reading. Segment phrases in ways that make sense linguistically. Also described people as "phrase readers"

Disciplinary Literacy

Reading to know how to contribute to the discipline as a whole. How you approach reading given the discipline. Learn how to do this from professors.

Rehearsal

Repetition of new material to move it to long term memory. Involves thinking about text in several different ways. Prove that you know what you are talking about.

Metacognitive Awareness

"Single most important concept in learning to read difficult texts" Adapt strategies according to text and situation. Involves watching yourself to see how things are going. Do things makes sense and what should I do if they don't?

Scan

Dismiss everything but the answer to the specific question you are looking for. Big for research readings. Know what you are looking for and scan to find it.

Intellectual Etiquette

Give reading or ideas fair hearing before giving your opinion. Don't give opinion until you understand, and differentiate between knowledge and opinion.

Peripheral Vision

How far eye can see from focal point up and down, left and right. Cuts reading time if you can see more and infer meaning.

Text Structure

How text is organized. Meant to get you from point A to point B in the best way possible. Good readers use structure to enhance understanding.

Rhetorical Reading

To me, sounds like reading text to understand the whole thing from the author's point of view. Reader tries to understand the author's argument and the way they get there.

Focus Strategies

Tunnel vision. Roof could cave in and you don't even notice. Being "in the zone" Strategies -- Set purpose, ask questions, set realistic time restraints, predict, stop yourself from daydreaming.

Co-Author the Text

Your interpretation of the text is influenced by countless factors such as setting, prior knowledge, purpose, vocabulary. So the text that is read and understood could vary significantly from what the author ever intended.

Assimilate and Accommodate

All related to changing schemata and way you think. Assimilate = How does this new info fit in with what I already know? Accommodate = change the way you think to account for new info. Change past understanding to match the new concepts.

Text

Any object or thing that is used to convey meaning from one person to another. That object is given meaning and conveys that idea to another person.

Author/Reader Contract

Author agrees to give the best organized, visual, and written information possible so the reader can maximize what they learn. Reader agrees to give the text a fair chance and try to understand what the author is saying before tossing it aside or rejecting it because it does not go with your opinion.

Layered Reading

Before, during, and after strategies. Read 3 times, each time with a different purpose. Before - get idea During - understand, read closely After - make sure you get it

Comprehension

Connect new information to prior understanding. It is a connection of tons of ideas and is not just a simple process. Also involves assimilating new info into schemata.

Sampling

Determine what will be coming next from the text. Process the things that give the most meaning. Only focus on the parts that infer meaning.

Advanced Organizers *

Determining what you already know about a subject to connect new information to old. Also, before strategies that give context and meaning so the new info has something to connect to. Can also be introductions, summaries, etc that help accomplish this.

Infer/Predict

Infer - determine meaning without the author directly telling it to you. Predict - Guess what is coming next based on what has been given.

Insight

Inner sight. Realizing inner nature or character of something.

Active vs. Passive Reading

Passive = looking at words on a page. Just doing the assignment. Active = Applying reading strategies, questioning, inferring, being fully involved in the text. They also check comprehension afterwards. Focus on fully understanding what the author is trying to teach

Strategies and Skills

Strategies = intentional, metacognitive decision, decide on which ones to use to make the most sense of reading. Skills = unintentional, automatic, typical routines.

Download

Synthesize as you read by writing downs sentences and phrases that describe concepts. Synthesize as you go rather than all at the end.

Explain

Test of understanding that goes deeper than just retelling what the text explained. Requires deeper understanding and synthesis.

Purpose

The reason you set for reading a text. Needs to be deeper than just to understand. The best value comes from reading, recognizing you met the purpose, and then proving that you know it.

Scholar

Very similar to an active reader. Full of questions, thinker, wants to learn more, committed to learning, publishing their findings, going further. Goal of universities (produce these)

Schemata

your mental definitions and understanding of everything. Philosophical understanding, what is a chair? Reading changes this.