 Now I'm not trying to judge you or insult you But in all likelihood you have not been taught how to read a book I I know you've been taught how to read sure, but there's a real big difference between reading a sentence and reading a book So I'm gonna hazard a guess here I'm gonna guess, you know this guess probably doesn't apply to all but I bet it applies to most if not all So I'm gonna guess that when you read especially Classbooks coursework you get bored. You lose your place When you finish reading a page, you don't know what you've read You can't remember what you've read. You can't remember why you've read it. You don't know what the point is You get frustrated sleepy tired when you read if you do like to read likely it's a fiction or the Internet entertainment section of a newspaper a blog and even only if the entries are short enough and You know Facebook When you study You likely only pay attention really to the bolded words or if there's a Box off to the side of the text with the word and a definition in there you you write that down You know when you take notes you probably do one of two things you one you take bullet point notes And so you just try to list some important sounding sentences In your notes But you don't know how they're related to each other You don't know what the overall point is and later on when you get to the test you look at your bullet points and think What am I supposed to do with these? If you don't do bullet points likely you do summaries you try to summarize each paragraph for each section But kind of the same thing happens You know you you go back to your summaries and you first of all you can't remember the details because you didn't write Down and you don't know How the summaries are supposed to be related to each other with the overall point is Likely when you read and you look at your notes, you don't see how they're supposed to form a cohesive whole You don't know how each part is related to each other You may not even ask the question of how is this a cohesive whole The only thing that you do know is that you try to write enough down Where you hope that it's going to be on the test and as soon as the test is over you forget about it And you no longer care This is How a lot of students go about reading today you don't believe people When they say that these things These big heavy objects that are very intimidating when you open them up Are filled with ideas They're filled with ideas That can free your mind Expand your consciousness Make you more aware of what we call the real world You don't believe people when they say that these Can help you become a better person. I hazard these guesses because these are my own experiences for a long time These were the experiences of some of my classmates Certainly the experiences of a lot of my students in the past and that can be kind of depressing Well, I'm gonna hazard another guess I'm gonna guess that you've been taught to read and kind of like the following few steps You start the first sentence and you read to the last at about No, I don't know every paragraph or so you Stop to summarize that paragraph and try to write something down if you don't If you if you don't do that then maybe you try to highlight the text and when you try to study You do your best to memorize everything that you've written down in hopes of finding something familiar on the test well, I Don't write my tests in a way that you can rely upon familiarity So that way it's not gonna work when you study. You're gonna have to comprehend And when you've been reading this way you get bored you get sleepy and Worst of all you don't comprehend You probably also think something like this, you know you think well Why should I bother reading after all the professor is just gonna lecture straight from the book anyway? Well, I don't know this may come as good news may come as bad news to you. I don't know But I don't lecture from the book. No, I do things differently. I try to present them the same material But from a different approach So when you are reading The way you've been taught how to read is not gonna work Now probably the most ineffective way to read is to start at the first sentence and read straight to the last This is ineffective because you don't know what questions you need to ask in order to comprehend the material Now, yeah, you do need to ask questions If you are not asking questions if you're just hoping the book will have an impact on you That's what's called passive reading Now passive reading might work with some fiction, but it doesn't do a real good job With nonfiction hardly at all Now a nonfiction like philosophy history math the sciences You have to ask the right questions in order to comprehend the material you have to direct your attention To what's going on within the text that's called active reading and what I want to teach you is active reading so Do you even know what the six basic questions are? You probably were taught the six basic questions and say something like elementary school But I doubt you've thought much of them since then Tell you what I'm gonna give you a chance to think about this go ahead and pause the video and Think about what are the six basic questions and write those down? You're gonna groan internally when I tell you we're gonna throw something at your computer screen. Don't do that You're lucky computer But you're gonna you're gonna think they're so obvious that you don't need to write them down Well, what do you think what'd you come up with? The six basic questions are who what where when why and how That's it six basic questions. Now. Yes, you groan internally you say wow, Dr. How do you just wasted 20 seconds of my life? Okay, do you write down those questions in your notes when you read material? Do you write down who what why where when and how I? Bet that if you start doing something like that Your notes are gonna improve a lot. You're gonna get a lot more out of the material and probably you're gonna be a lot less bored now in In this course, I'm gonna give you some specific questions to ask their applications of the six basic questions when we're dealing with Philosophy and even these applications are real applicable to all your other disciplines So in other words what you learn and how to read in philosophy is gonna be really useful in history and math even science, especially science So I'm gonna give those questions to you through the course of these videos and Through the course of the semester. We're gonna keep building on them as we go Now like I said the absolute probably the most Ineffective and worst way to read is to start the first sentence and read till the last Well, then you ask what am I supposed to do? Well, you skim Skimming is your friend Skim well skim often skim repeatedly When you skim you are searching for the answers to the questions now. I want to be clear skimming is not reading fast Skimming is selective reading All right skimming is selective reading and I'm gonna take you through some steps Where to skim first now? I don't want to say that you're never gonna read from the first sentence to the last No, of course you are But you skim first and you might think to yourself wow, that's a lot of extra work. Well, it's work, but it's less work Then simply reading for the first instance the last you get a lot less exasperated You get a lot less frustrated you get a lot less, you know You are not filled with despair anymore when you are given a huge reading assignment No, when you You know skimming is work and then reading for this first into the last but it's also highly effective very effective So let's take a look at some of the parts of the book that you're going to skim in order to find these questions Well, you've heard it said that you can't judge a book by its cover Well, this is true to an extent you can judge a book by its cover Just not only by its cover a cover is a really great place to start judging a book So let's think about the title the title is a fantastic way of telling you what kind of book it is And by what kind of book you might think of this is in which class with this book be assigned So you have books in history math science philosophy art literature And you could even have like history in the specific topics of the history philosophy the history of science History of ideas courses are intensely interesting and do yourself a favor by taking one So the title of the book is going to at the very least or hopefully it's going to tell you what kind of book it is And which field does it belong? Sometimes the title of the book will even give you a hint as to the specific question that's being asked within that field So you can have for instance a book. That's a survey of the history of the Americas You could have a very specific question within that. So for instance, what is the impact that the? Spanish immigrants had on the American on on American civilization today Right, that would be a question within history The title is a great place to start another really great place to start on the cover is the blurb the publishes blurb This is usually a short paragraph that's found at the back of a book if it's a hard cover All right It's getting if it's a soft cover and if it's a hard cover sometimes it's on the back Sometimes it's on that little flap you open up the book. You have that little flap right there Sometimes it's right there a publishes blurb what they're trying to do is they are trying to sell you the book Right, but the way they try to sell the book to you is by giving you at least a description of what this book is what questions They're trying to answer Or you know, what is the purpose for instance? What is the purpose of this book? Another good place is also sometimes the publishes blurb will give you some detailed information as to how The author is trying to do that which is a really great clue to have before you start trying to read the book and In addition to the publishers blurb, you know, we're still doing with the cover you also have reviews Quite often publishers will have a review for a book That's you know, it's usually just by you know some kind of peer in the field and usually it's appreciative I've yet to see a review of a book by the publisher that says this book stinks No, the review that's on the cover of the book will usually be by a peer and We'll try to you know, tell you that this book is good trying to lend credibility to the book Sometimes you get a fine customer views, right? And especially if you go to Amazon.com you find customer views now, you know with those reviews You kind of have to take them with a grain of salt, right? Whether the reviewers liked the book or not is really not what I'm interested in when I'm reading reviews What I'm interested in with reading the reviews is I'm trying to find out more about the book You know whether Reviewers like it or not if it's a good review they're going to contain some kind of description of the book okay, so I Usually this description again, it's going to be kind of like the publishers blurb But it's usually some kind of detailed description of what the book is like What the question the author is trying to do or what the purpose What is the purpose of the author and how the author tries about doing it and sometimes if it's a good review? There's going to be some kind of critique as to whether or not that attempts to succeed or to fail Then why beware in reviews that just say this book is good or this book is bad. Those just aren't helpful at all So, you know, this is how you judge a book by its cover But like I said, we can't stop with just the cover We actually have to open up the book and we'll take a look at that in the next section So we've opened up the book and we want to find out more about this book at the front We're still skimming. We're not starting for the first interest to read to the last There are more than a few things you find when you first open the book But let's turn to the table of contents a table of contents Has many advanced and has lots of really good information when you're trying to understand or trying to skim a book for the first time Most notably a table of contents will give you a better idea of what the purpose is Now a table of contents will have a structure to it and it will give you the plan the how Or at least what the author thinks the author is doing when they're trying to hook to achieve this purpose within the book So if they're giving some kind of argument of philosophy, for instance You're going to see chapter titles which will give you clues to what terms or you know what terms or Concepts that they're using at that point and how this ultimately leads to the conclusion In fact, you can sometimes read the argument of the whole book just by looking at the table of contents So the table of contents could tell you how the book is organized Which is we're really helpful later on when you're trying to quickly find information The table of contents will also give you important terms Which I will talk about in the next video and the terms of the important concepts And a really great place to find those terms are in the titles for the chapters, okay? The table of contents will also provide something like a map of the whole book Remember when I was had the analogy about getting lost on the forest Well the table of contents is your map if you're reading a chapter You don't know why go back to the table of contents and try to figure it out At one place to look at the table of contents and try to figure out from there I mean you have nothing else I can tell you whether you're near the beginning or near the end or right smack in the middle of the book So the table of contents is a really helpful source of information something that it's not very popular these days to do so but there are such things as section titles and Section titles used to be included in the table of contents They don't do so much anymore. I think they're trying to fit the table of contents all in one page Which is has disadvantages also has disadvantages The advantage of having the section titles and the table of contents is you get to see the whole thing the disadvantages It makes for a long table of contents Well, let's think about the section headings the section headings Have a lot of the same advantages as the chapter titles I the section headings will tell you what that section is about or should give me an idea What that section is bound and you'll find many good terms in the section headings as such in heading It's also useful For not only knowing where to read but we're not to read So for instance if you want if you're in a chapter and the ancient Greek philosopher saying you want to find the section You want to find information by Heraclitus? You need not look in the section title dailies Chances are if you're trying to find information Heraclitus look for the section title Heraclitus So that's the table of contents and the section titles Um We still haven't even gotten to the actual text of the book, right? We went through the cover we went through the table of contents in the section and section headings now Let's take a look at what it means to actually skim the text So we're looking at the skimming chapters now Now chapters skimming chapters is not all that different actually than what we've been doing before with skimming the cover And skimming the table of contents What what one of things to do is skimming chapters if you just look at any generic chapter a Really great way to skim just a chapter is to skim is to read the introductory paragraph But sometimes it's two or three and the closing paragraph is sometimes this two or three, okay? And this will tell you That it should be something like a summary of what that whole chapter look that it looks like it should You know really good Chapters written this way will give you kind of an outline of what this chapter is like. It's almost like this a table of contents just for that chapter Now there's certain chapters that are going to be helpful. So Most often I think people just ignore the preface for a book now preface is really helpful a Preface can sometimes the preface will give you even more detailed information on the purpose and how the entire book is organized Quite often prefaces, you know, if it's like a second or third edition Preface's would tell you how they're supposed to be an improvement from this from this most recent edition over the past editions and tell you where those improvements are Sometimes it gives the motivations of the author which are not always explicit in the book itself And motivations while not necessarily important to how the author was successful Can give you an idea of what the author's thinking while the author is writing this book and Also a lot of times in preface is you're going to find a list of acknowledgments and You know might be some time before you really fully appreciate that but you know with a list of acknowledgments will give you Sometimes giving an idea of how thorough the author was you know, for instance if an author is arguing for a particular position say Authors arguing that all numbers are universals and you go to the preface and you find amongst in the preface You say helpful comments or given by such or such and such and amongst those names you have somebody who thinks the complete opposite Well, that's probably a good thing. That means that the author is trying to do his or her homework when arguing for the conclusion After the preface is hopefully there's going to be an introductory chapter and introductory chapter I mean I suggest reading the entire introductory chapter As a way to as a way to read the whole book So the introductory chapter quite often will provide an outline of the book again You should mirror the table of contents and the chat the introductory chapter will probably tell you what the author thinks The is the correct answer to the question that the author is dealing with Sometimes authors are can be a little coy about this. They don't want to Reveal all their cards at the beginning of the book and that's okay. I get it But you know just keep in mind that the author is gonna usually an author will tell you not only what question Explicitly and maybe in like a really direct format you can copy down directly in your notes. What the author is trying to do What and if you're doing a philosophy? What's the question the philosopher is trying to ask and quite often Will contain the answer that the philosopher thinks is the correct answer to that question And You know you might have heard it said that you shouldn't ruin a mystery novel by reading the last chapter first Well, go ahead and do that with nonfiction. That's completely okay with nonfiction. Go ahead and read the concluding chapter Whereas the author might be a little coy in an introductory chapter the author is usually really explicit in the concluding chapter The author quite often tells you exactly what the author thinks he or she is doing Through the to the course of the whole book and again this provides another outline So, you know what I mean by coy is sometimes in the introductory chapter the author will give kind of a teaser question and suggest a How should we say? Perhaps a controversial answer, right and the concluding chapter the the authors really explicit And gives something of a short explanation as to why that answer may be controversial, but nonetheless true So quite often you'll find that in the concluding chapter So this has been about skimming the book, okay It's just skimming the contents of the book that we talked about the prep is the introduction to the chapter What about the other chapters? Well, go ahead and skim those two Yeah, and and even before you sit down to read the first sentence to the last sentence in the chapter itself Skim the chapter and again skimming is not fast reading skating in a selective reading So you skim by reading the first one or two or three paragraphs in the final one or two or three paragraphs quite often I'll give you an idea of what that whole chapter is about and Even within you know even outside of those paragraphs skim the first two sentences of The chat of a paragraph in the chapter It'll tell you what hopefully I tell you what that paragraph is about and this again This is really useful when you try to quickly find information So why you skim you should take notes And those notes will be based upon the six questions or you know about the questions that I talked about earlier Now when you skim and you're taking notes, this is what's called active reading now active reading is when you make an effort to Try to learn what is contained in the book And what this means exactly is something like this You know trying to understand the definition and a lot of understand the definition is knowing how it's going to be applied in different circumstances a Lot of understanding a definition is knowing how that definition is different from other definitions You know difference need not mean contrary or Contradictory it might might mean how one implies the other right now one So you know if for instance if you say that a rose is red Well that follows that a rose is colored right so You know a large part to to reading into comprehension is For active it is to be an active reader You have to understand hit to make an effort and try to use those concepts and judgments in different circumstances Now if you don't If you're not trying to be an active reader if you just expect the book to make an impression upon you It's not going to happen. This is why you get bored Right you are reading and you get lost in the words and you don't know what's going on It's because you're not trying to keep anything in your head and see how it's all related to to everything else If you just passively read You're gonna fall asleep So while you're skimming you should take notes and I'm gonna have several suggestions on What questions you try to answer and how to take those notes and I'll? Explain those questions in later videos and during the course of the semester This is gonna be something that you're gonna have to learn and practice then the entire semester You're not gonna get it overnight, and that's okay. All right. This is this is a process Speaking of notes did you take notes during this video? Do you know what the main point of this video is I Mention a really important skill early on do you know? Can you remember what that skill is? Did you write it down? Did you I Did you write down the main points of this video? I listed several different parts of a book earlier Do you know those parts of the book off the top of your head and why they're important? Did you write them down? Well, if you didn't do any of these things You didn't learn And if you didn't learn You're not gonna do well in this course or frankly any course