On revisiting old books

So, since the end of last year as well as the beginning of this year I have been studying English both formally and on my own, and one of the language learning tips that has stuck with me since I heard it is one I picked up from here that says "to improve comprehension don't try to understand". In other words, when we are exposed to material in another language, it is important not to focus too much on trying to understand those words that we are not familiar with or don't know, and to move on to those words that we do understand. Because what happens when we stop to check those few words we don't know is that we lose the flow we are carrying, we lose the momentum, and it becomes a very tiresome and slow process. It is very difficult to read a book if we have to stop every moment to look for the meaning of a word. This can happen even while reading in our own language. And what ends up happening is that we miss the bigger picture by focusing on trifles. You end up not understanding the whole because you want to understand the parts.

Instead, if we accept uncertainty, what happens is that because of the context we end up understanding the gist of it many times. And the goal is after this to also give it a second look to review anything that was not clear enough.

I find this to be particularly good advice because I think it applies not only to language learning, but to learning in general. It is quite applicable when reading a new book that deals with a subject you don't know, since there are books that are very difficult to understand at the first reading. Moreover, there are books that have so much information, where the difficult part is not the understanding itself, but the fact of remembering everything you can learn from it. There are people who try complex memorization methods for this, but what I find best, at least in my experience, is to keep the book and continually revisit it over time. Since a good book is made, I think, not to be read once and then forgotten on a shelf gathering dust, but on the contrary it is meant to be a place you come back to and revisit. With time you will understand more and more, and when you understand, any memorization trick will be useless, because you will already know the essence of what is written, you will have a better comprehension of the text. And I believe that learning is not so much about memorization as it is about understanding and comprehension.

I particularly think it is a more pleasant experience to read a book more serenely, knowing that you will read it again if necessary, than to beat your head over page after page trying to understand every inch of what is written. You may actually realize that you will comprehend more if you don't try so hard to understand.

Image Source: 1