 So, hopefully you're reading. I realize that there's the phenomenon where students sometimes don't read the relevant material or even sometimes don't even bother purchasing the textbook. If you're watching this video in this video series, I hope by now you're convinced that this is a bad idea. When you read, do you know what you should write down? And when you write something down, do you read it again? And I don't mean right before the exam. I mean right before the next class, well before the next class. Did what you write down seem sensible, especially outside the context of an exam? Do you know why you wrote down and what it's supposed to do for you? But most importantly, you need to ask yourself the question of whether what you have been doing has been working out. That is, have you been reading or whatever, however you're studying for the course? Have you been getting the grade that you want and the course hasn't been a waste of your time? Hey, if you're confident that what you've been doing is just fine, then skip the video, skip the series. However, if you think that reading books is at least a little bit of a waste of your time, if not maybe a lot, then continue watching this series and learn how to get more out of books. In order to be an effective reader, you have to take good notes. And good notes is not just a series of sentences. Well, without knowing this, without knowing how to take proper notes, you might be able to memorize some sentences. You might even be able to and then recognize them in a multiple-choice test. You might even be able to write those sentences in some kind of correct order for an essay exam. But you haven't learned. Well, at this point there are four questions, at least four questions. You need to ask yourself and you need to answer while you're reading. What kind of book is it? What's the book about in whole or in part? Is it true or false? And yes, you get to ask this question even of textbooks. And after all this, what's the significance? One way to answer the question, what kind of book it is, and there are probably several, is to determine the subject matter of the book. Yeah, but what I have in mind is basically what your librarian does. And your librarian is much better at it than I am. So it is dividing the books into the kind that they are. So, yeah, you have fiction on one hand, and that's drama, comedy, thriller, tragedy, horror. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list. It's just some real good examples. The purpose of fiction, what these books are trying to do is entertain. Maybe try to give you some kind of life lesson or something. But with fiction, they're not necessarily trying to tell you something true. They're mostly just trying to entertain. It has some kind of effect on you like that. On the other hand, there's non-fiction. Non-fiction is not necessarily for entertainment's sake. Non-fiction is kind of a deceptive label because quite a lot actually fits under here. So you have the theoretical. The theoretical is just, these are books that are trying to tell you something that's either true or false. Trying to tell you about reality or about the world. You have the theoretical on the one hand, you have the practical on the other. The practical is trying to tell you how to do something. To already take what's true and then do something with it. So just looking at the top here, we've got engineering, medicine, counseling, that sort of thing. Engineering is not going to question the principles of physics. Engineering is going to use the principles of physics. Same thing happens with counseling. Counseling is not necessarily going to question the principles of psychology. It's going to use the principles of psychology. We can have further examples, but let's just keep going. And then finally, we have just the creative arts. And the creative arts are interested in basically making what's beautiful. They're trying to create objects of beauty. Now you might look at this distinction between the theoretical, the practical, and the creative. The theoretical is always going to use something. And the practical is always going to tell us what's true. And the creative arts might use, yes, of course. These are not perfectly clean cut distinctions. But they are really helpful in trying to tell us what the book is trying to do. And trying to tell us what the author wants, what the impact the author wants on us. Knowing the subject matter of a book is one thing. Knowing what you're supposed to learn about the subject matter is another. What the book is about is learning what you're supposed to learn about the subject matter. So knowing that the subject is history is one thing. Knowing that the author is trying to inform you about General George Washington's tactics during the American Revolution is what the book is about. And this distinction may not be obvious. Okay, so think of it this way. Subjects are not the sort of thing that are either true or false, right? If I were to simply say history, it'd be weird if you responded that's false. No, subjects are not the sort of thing that are true or false. Well, in contrast, if I say something like this, that General Washington used dice to decide which territory he'd defend. Well, you know, that's an assertion. That's something that is either true or false. By the way, it's false. But this assertion, this is the point. It's the conclusion. It's the question that the author is trying to answer. And it's what the book is about. Well, there's a difference between these two things. Knowing the overall point or what the author wants you to finish the book believing or whatever impact the author wants to have on you by the time you finish the book, that's the overall point. That's what's said overall. How the author gets there is what's said in detail. You do get to ask and wonder whether what the author has written is true. I mean, some books are sacrosanct, okay. But even asking whether what is sacred is true can help you better understand why it's true. And sometimes that's more important than merely understanding what is true. A word of caution, however. You get to ask whether a book is true or false. And you should ask whether a book is true or false. However, that does not mean that whatever conclusion you reach is accurate. And this certainly doesn't mean that you're competent to ask whether a book is true or false. Now, you might think this is insulting. And I promise you, I'm not trying to be insulting. But you already know that you're not always competent in determining whether something is true or false. Written in a book. I mean, most of the people who watch this video don't know whether and where Einstein made mistakes. And he did. Most of us don't know how to, you know, read medical information and determine what information is actually out of date. Most of us, we have a good large number of people who can't spot the egregious errors made in movies that are based on actual events. Being able to determine what's true or false about a book is an acquired skill in that subject area. And not all subject areas are alike. However, you're not going to become competent unless you try and compare what you've done with others. So yeah, ask, try, fail, and learn. Determining the significance of the book is not something I can summarize in only one part on a video on a different topic. This is too much for just eight seconds. I mean, trying to figure out the significance is to figure out how this book relates to other books that are about the same thing. Or maybe not about the same thing, but on the same subject. Or maybe not on the same subject, but still, you know, nonfiction. Or maybe, you know, not even nonfiction, how it relates to fiction. The significance of the book is trying to place the book within the conceptual scheme of all of the books. That's too much to try to figure out. One little clip. When you do inspection or reading, you ask what kind of book it is, what the book is about. What's said overall and what's in detail. And while you're writing down what is said overall and what's said in detail, you have to note the structure. And what I mean by that is this. I mean, there are questions within questions and there are answers within answers. Some questions require further questions and some answers point to further answers. Remember that what is said in detail is supposed to lead you to the point. What the author wants to say overall, what the book is supposed to be about as a whole. How the author gets there from the details to what's said overall. That's the structure. Well, your immediate reaction might be something like this. Whoa, that's an awful lot. That's like taking a whole course. If you have this reaction, that probably tells you how much you do not know about reading. This is all contained within inspection or reading and it's probably the content of most any multiple choice test. It's the least demanding upon your intellect. The remaining two levels of reading are the most demanding and they have the highest reward. During analytical reading, you take conceptual notes. You write down those assertions that the author provided that is supposed to get to the main point overall. You need to ask yourself how they've been tested. What's their justification? And if there isn't any justification, what would be required to justify them? During synoptic reading, you take dialectical notes. Remember how you wanted to test those assertions written down during conceptual reading? Well, sometimes another author has already tested those assertions. Sometimes what one author has written is contrary to another or supportive or complementary or congruent or completely irrelevant. But synoptic reading is where you find those relations and you write those down in dialectical notes. Well, you might immediately respond to the question of where should I write with something like on no paper, what else? Adler suggests you write in the book as well and he suggests a list of various symbols and jots. Underline important sentences. You use vertical lines to highlight an important series of sentences, passages, or maybe even a whole paragraph. You can use an asterisk for important paragraphs or sections. Write numbers in the margins to indicate a series of the author's points, say reasons or evidence. You write page numbers on one page to reference what an author has said on another page. You write down various questions, sometimes questions that the author has asked or failed to answer, or sometimes questions that the author has inspired. The table of contents usually has enough space for you to write such notes. Sometimes the books have blank pages either at the beginning or the very end that are also very useful for such notes. Or, frankly, chapters tend to have blank space or blank page right from the chapter that are also very usable for such notes. You might wonder, Adler would suggest writing in a book to begin with. Writing in a book helps yourself with things. It helps you stay awake and active while you're reading. It helps you to think and interact with the book. It helps you remember the author's thoughts and assertions.