Strategies for Reading Literature
Pay less attention to scenery and more attention to
character development
There are many words that are unknown. Don’t spend too much
time looking up words in the dictionary. Look for the key words that have
meaning and look those up in the dictionary.
Try to guess the meanings of unknown words through context.
Underline (or highlight with a highlighter pen) unknown
vocab. After reading the chapter go back and look up underlined words.
Develop ‘Tolerance of ambiguity’.
Look at and focus on the first and last paragraphs in a
chapter (also sentences in a paragraph). Why? Very important information is
contained in the first paragraph and the last paragraph often concludes or
summarizes what happened in the chapter.
Establish or get clear what the relationships are
between/among characters.
look on he internet for themes, look at the book in your
language, read online summaries: is this okay? Yes and no. Any strategy for
helping you understand a text better is better than being totally stuck and not
being able to get through the text. That said, be careful of using translations
or online sources. They are sometimes incorrect; they may focus on things that
are not our focus; additionally, they
may be censored or incomplete.
Are there other strategies for reading we have not
mentioned? What are they?
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