Use 'Close Reading' to Retain Every Detail When You Study ...Middle East

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Close reading is a method that requires you to focus on every detail in a text and operate on the assumption that no detail is in there by accident or for no reason. That's not an assumption so much as it's a fact. Think about the process required for that content to be in front of you. A subject matter expert had to research it all, write it all down, pass it through perhaps an agent and definitely an editor, if not multiple editors. If it's for school, that material had to be reviewed by some kind of board and approved for use. Everything that made it to the final version had multiple sets of eyes on it. All of it is important and deserves to be there; anything irrelevant would likely have been cut.

The method is even included in the United States’ Common Core standards for K-12 education. There, it’s defined as “the methodical investigation of a complex text through answering text dependent questions geared to unpack the text’s meaning.”

How to use the close reading method

Close reading involves reading everything twice (or more than twice). The first time is to get what it says, but the following times are to understand why it says it and why it says it that way. The goal is to be able to apply that deeper thinking and understanding to what you learned the first time through.

Read for details

On your second time through the content, you'll actually do the "close reading" part. Highlight key terms, circle new words, and look all of those those up. Pay special attention to formatting, like subtitles, section breaks, and visuals like charts or photos. Remember: None of it is in there by accident. Think, too, about how the information is ordered. Does the author start broad, describing an issue before zeroing in on examples? Or do they start with a specific example and then explain broader context?

Why is this section titled the way it is?

Why introduce this idea before that one?

Who is the intended audience? Students? Educators? The general public? Plumbers? Politicians?

Read for meaning

Once you've read it enough times that you've identified the main idea and found some questions to ask, you've made it to your final read-through. Here, zoom out. Stop thinking of individual words, unusual punctuation, or why the author included a particular graph. Think instead of the bigger picture again, like you did on that first read-through. What's the author's purpose? How do the things you noticed the second time through or the questions you asked the third time through contribute to that message?

Maybe a recurring reference in a short story hints at a theme. Maybe the structure of an essay is meant to mirror the thoughts of its subject. That's what this exercise is about. You're moving beyond what the text says and understanding how it's delivering its message. Obviously, this is a useful practice when studying literature, but it works for a variety of subjects. If you're reading history, you might wonder why an author frames a particular battle or policy in a negative or positive way and wonder, too, how the people on the other side of that battle or policy felt—and why their view isn't represented. Even asking those questions gets you thinking deeper and relating more to the material, which makes it not only easier to understand, but easier to remember.

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