What are some things I can do to help me understand something difficult I am trying to read?

Answer 1

Understanding and comprehension often go hand-in-hand with interaction. The more you interact with a task, the more you're likely to remember it afterward. For example, think about seeing a new card game being played. If you are only passively watching others play it, you're probably less likely to remember the details than if you tried to play it yourself - no matter how well or poorly you actually played.

When I taught high school English, I would encourage my students to interact with the text as often as possible in meaningful ways. Also, these techniques are useful across a variety of types of text: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, whatever! I'll list a few of them below:

Annotating- As you read, have a pencil and/or a highlighter with you to write notes, summarize, ask questions, or identify what appear to be important ideas within the text. Consider these kinds of activities as a sort of conversation or discussion with the author, or the writing. Doing these kinds of activities often increase your interaction with the text, thus your processing and understanding.

Summarizing/Explaining to another person- This one is most useful after you've finished reading, yet it can still be powerful. Find someone and attempt to explain what you just read. By turning the text into spoken language, you will engage different parts of your brain to help understand and retain that info. While it would be great to have that other person be an expert on whatever it is you're reading, they don't have to be! Even (or maybe especially) trying to explain to a non-expert what it is you've read will help you wrap your mind around new material.

Nonverbal Representations- Draw a picture of what it is you just read, or create a chart or graph that describes something about the text. What's an idea that could be expressed without using words, and then how would you express that idea? Through sound? Or a type of texture? Transforming the words on the page into some nonverbal representation might help you make sense of what you just read.

That's a good start for now, and I'll encourage you to investigate other kinds of strategies on your own. I'm sure a quick search for "active reading strategies" in a search engine will yield all kinds of additional ideas to try.

Best of luck!