Reading college-level material is something that takes practice, strategies, and a bit of knowledge about how you work as a reader. At the Knowledge Market, we have so many different kinds of readers on staff -- we have people who need to read things out loud in order to understand it, we have folks who need to take notes while they read, some people need absolute silence while others need a coffee-shop buzz to stay focused. Lots of our consultants enjoy reading some sources more than others -- and the ones that are enjoyable feel easy to read -- the ones that are less enjoyable...well...those pose more of a challenge.
Reader/Writer Responsibility
Every text you read has an author -- maybe even more than one. This means that there was a person, somewhere, who thought really hard about how to say what they're saying because they wanted someone to understand them. Now, that does not mean they thought about EVERY person who'd ever read their ideas. Maybe they had a specific person in mind when crafting their work -- maybe we aren't them. Nevertheless, we're reading it now, and it's our task to understand, judge, learn, etc.
Since every text has an author, it's important to remember this: the relationship between a reader and a writer is a push and pull between who has more work to do. It might seem a little weird, but if there is more responsibility placed on the reader to understand, then maybe the writer composed their ideas in such a way that would...
A) require the reader to look up a bunch of words they don't know, because the author doesn't explain them
B) ask the reader to interpret symbolism or metaphor because the author chose not to compose ideas literally
C) need the reader to have some background knowledge on the subject because they didn't spend time introducing complicated ideas as if their reader was a novice on the subject.
When the reader has more responsibility in the task of understanding, there's just more work involved in reading. Is this your situation? Here are some strategies for you while you read!
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