Reading Skills Reality Check 

"Lecturing to the wall" is something I've always done instinctively, although I specifically treat this activity as though I am explaining a concept to someone else. Not a new idea, certainly, but being able to articulate a newly learned concept in way that I would have found satisfactory myself has always been the very best means of consolidating new information.

The technique of ''lecturing to the wall' is similar to a technique that I have developed which is also loosely based off the Feynman technique. I attempt to explain recently learned things as if I were summarizing it to other people. Through that process, I can not only attempt to articulate for it to make sense to myself, but I can also find gaps of information and other areas that I may need to improve on.

I was a massive bookworm when I was younger, and I have collected a library card in every place I have lived. Since about 2011, my reading habit has tapered off, with the exception of a couple of months in 2017 where I read 20 books in about 6 weeks. In the last 3 years, it has been particularly difficult, since I have been finding more community on the internet and that has left less time to read. This year, I have made an effort, and I have read about 3 books, all in my target language. This New Year's resolution is to read 12 books in any language and get back to myself. Thank you for this video, it reminded me to read at all, and consider the way I read when I do.

Reading - unlike speaking, listening or writing, is a skill where you rarely get feedback on how well you've doing. People can imagine that they have understood more than they really have. Reading aloud is something you mentioned in a speech circa 2017 and since then, I've used reading aloud for checking that I truly understand what's before me - and to avoid falling into mechanical, superficial forms of reading. Thanks for continuing to upload to the channel! Greetings from Berlin.

All great points, especially reading aloud. For myself, I've always benefited greatly by writing a 1000 word review of the book I've read. I speak from experience, having written over 1400 book reviews.

I'm 100% convinced that reading is the absolute key to vocabulary building, which in turn is the absolute key to language proficiency. I've probably split my time to something like 80-20 in favour of listening, but I honest think that should be the other way round. Trouble is, I don't like reading, but I recognize its importance. I'm going to aim for something more like 50-50.

I've decided to read a novel aloud - My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. What a difference! Reading aloud adds a unique dimension to taking in a novel - a much richer experience than either reading silently or listening to an audio book (I'm a huge audio book fan btw). Thanks again.

Professor Arguelles, thank you for this interesting and timely reminder to be cognizant of how we read! It's particularly useful for me to think about as I start to plan my goals for autodidactic study for the upcoming year. I am hoping to further engage in this community in the coming months, as I have truly enjoyed listening to your recent lectures and videos. In particular, you have inspired me to add ancient languages to my study now-- since I was young, I have always had in the back of my mind the goal to read and write Latin "someday," but since I watched your first Advanced Shadowing video, I have begun the project in earnest and am including Latin in my weekly study rotation. I look forward to learning more about the virtual academy in the coming months.

What you say about reading aloud is really on point. It matches my experience 100%.

Nice insights and commentary, good reminders. Reading well, like any practice (music, woodworking, cooking....), for me is a form of meditation :). Enjoying your recently posted videos, hope you stay with it. If a small group opens up in Spanish or Russian language as you described for German reading, I may join.

This plus the Latin read are very informative and relevant to my comment a few weeks back about how to actually go about reading. What I have been doing in my languages is reading a passage (length depends on the language) and just going through it largely without looking up unknown words for X minutes (usually 10-20). Then I go back, look up the words, and scriptorium the passage, giving particular attention to the new words. Then I repeat in the evening. If I can’t do this with a text for native speakers, I do this with textbook content, or Assimil/Linguaphone/TYS passage. I also sometimes record myself reading the native passage and play it back during my daily passive listening. On a different note, concerning my personal interest in polyliteracy's position intellectually and pedagogically, polyliteracy strikes me as a continuation of the Great Books tradition but deviates in that it places a much greater focus on language learning and synoptic learning. It may serve best as an alternative to contemporary academic inquiry that really builds on this synoptic element ethnologically in terms of literature, philosophy, and culture, past and present. Happy holidays!

Wow every time I watch a video I wonder why you don't have more subscribers, especially considering so many people are aware of you in the language learning community

Beginning in May of 2022, I will offer virtual options for working with me to improve your skills in reading French, German, Latin, or Spanish literatures, to engage in Great Books discussions, and to provide support for the self-study of foreign languages. If these might interest you, please fill out the application form on my website at alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.

We all know it anyway, but it must be said by a person like you to integrate these very valuable tips... :) It's an interesting phenomenon, which will show me that nothing goes without authority. In the best case authority means wisdom too... Thank you Alexander! An excellent lesson ! Michel

Yes, reading aloud is most important! Thank you for making these videos!

Incidentally, I'm in the middle of reading "How to Read a Book" by M.J. Adler and C. van Doren. It has been a slow process but it is worth it.

Very interesting topic, didn't expect it, but it's certainly very helpful as I have repeatedly noticed my reading lack in speed and sometimes in retention as well, usually due to my drifting off into daydreaming. From you've described, I definitely fall into two or three of these on a regular basis, but they keep changing: sometimes I do read aloud, sometimes I do treat a scientific paper differently from a story, sometimes I summarize what I've read, but none of these techniques are consistent across my reading patterns. The only one that I think I don't fall into is reading too fast because I am a very slow reader, period. I will definitely try to take this advice to heart and incorporate it into my routine, starting with figuring out the different approaches. Thank you for this reality check, Professor!

English is not my first language. One of the reasons I do read aloud is because I want to record myself. Later on, I will listen to the recording, and see how close I was speaking to a native speaker. I don't know if I ever get there, but my latest recordings sound much more natural and fluent compared to the ones when I just started this process.

Another trap is the topic trap - reading the same, or similar, subject matter to the exclusion of useful, interesting, enlightening diversity that results from reading in more than one, or a few, library classifications or literary genres. Studying in depth within a proscribed domain may be necessary to achieve an academic degree, but the values inherent in breadth requirements should not be set aside for personal specializations. For example, reading Charles Petzold’s Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software is a fine activity for connoisseurs of the great books.

I am so happy you just popped up on my phone. How can I get more of your texts? I see nowhere to subscribe. Just seeing your bookshelves made me click! I've been meaning to buy the "how to" book and will get on that right away. I first heard of it from Ben McEvoy, Hard Core Book Club, England. Thanks for the reminder. Loved all I learned from you today. Regards, Diana, Chicago, ILL

Adler's book is an amazing guide, I read it and it really helped me. There is also another great book by Otto Maria Carpeaux, a German intelectual radicaded in Brazil, the book is called "Historia da literatura ocidental " I used it as a guide and I discovered so many great writers in it.

I have gotten better at reading in general after I got into Japanese- not reading out loud may spell doom to your speaking because of the writing system. This made the words stick better. About the 4th trap, I still come to a halt in fiction books: how do I explain a fiction book?That is one of the reasons why I like more non-fiction: "explaining to a wall" like you said, it is a necessity to me in the non-fiction, making it much more exciting to me. Fiction, doesn't fit well in this idea, I try to make it more dramatic reading, it gets better, but I still feel the necessity of integration of the "explaining to the wall" part that I still don't have in my fiction reading. I may be missing some part of the fiction reading, but this is one of the reasons why non-fiction is much more rewarding to me.

I am guilty of reading too fast and not getting enough out of what I read. Reading aloud is something I do often, because I like the idea of telling a story (or whatever I may be reading) aloud, and because I find it particularly useful for the purpose of language learning, as well as because it MAKES me slow down. But interestingly, I found that I understand a text less when I read it aloud, because I focus too much of my attention on the diction and the storytelling, and I don't have enough attention left to really understand the text. So usually it goes like this: I read a sentence or passage out loud, I botch it, I re-read it semi-aloud to figure out what I just attempted to read, if it's still confusing I read it once more silently, and then I reread aloud to show I can. It's fun actually! Thanks for the great advice and the book tip.

Thank you for a recommendation of the book, it will be interesting for me to read it. I only read aloud books in foreign languages when I practice pronunciation. I feel that my reading aloud in Russian is not good enough. This is also the point for foreign languages, but I console myself that as a foreigner I am allowed to sound bad. But in Russian I don’t have such an excuse and I know how it should sound. And if I compare myself to professional readers, I feel sorry for myself and a little ashamed of my skills. My mother said that I just should practice more, but I slip into the routine of just reading for other people. It is practiced in my family not only for small kids who can’t read themselves, but as a sort of family entertainment: one of us is reading and the others are listening. Especially if someone does not feel well, such reading will soothe them and help them feel better, calm down and fall asleep. (And your reading of Harry Potter reminds me of this tradition. I don’t like this book at all and I insist that “Harry Potter and the methods of rationality” of Eliezer Yudkowsky is a significantly better book. The latter explains the scientific approach in such easy and entertaining way that every child could understand it. But the video of you reading Harry Potter was so calming: your books in the background and Merlin on your laps - a perfect combination.) And the other possibility: if I help somebody to learn Russian, I feel I should do my best and read in Russian as best as I can. Usually I take several attempts and it gets better with every try, but it is a pain in the neck to do it. That’s why I do it only for somebody else. For people how study foreign language such audio with a written text is the best way, from my point of view, to study languages: you read the book yourself and listen to someone with a good pronunciation and hopefully some actor skills who is reading the same text for you at the same time. In this way, you’ll easily memorize the pronunciation of the words and melody of the language. It turned out that I follow the advice of talking to the wall. But usually I tell about a book I’ve just read to my nearest and dearest because I am bursting with information which I’ve gotten from this book and it causes the appearance of a lot of emotions in me. Maybe that is not the best way for them to experience a book, but I think it is good enough if they are not going to read this book themselves. I usually feel that my retelling is of much poorer quality than the book itself, but it is not an easy way to surpass a well-written book.

Would love for you to cover the different homeschooling curriculums you considered for your children and your own experiences using them. I had never heard of the Ron Paul Curriculum, I myself was leaning towards Robinson Curriculum with some modifications.

I’ll suggest a book „ Make it Stick „ it’s a good read you’ll enjoy it as it pertains to the same topic and tells about how to make the information stick in your mind . 👍🏻

Professor, have you ever read a book called "L'art de lire" by Émile Faguet? I don't know if there is an English translation, but it's a formidable little book on the art of reading, as the title suggests. I'm glad this channel is putting out a lot of new content more regularly.

9:06 - Reading aloud 11:15 - Lecturing the wall

Una curiosidad: ¿por qué valora Ud. en tanto la serie de los Great Books? ¿Se ha fijado en otros canones distintos al de Adler?

Hi, thank you for the video. Behind you There are an arabic book (ataswir al islami, I think). Have you read it?

I've read the book twice now, but don't know why it hasn't impacted me as much. I'm hoping to get a reply, maybe I'm THAT bad at reading that even such a book couldn't help me?

But... how can I guarantee that I get the most out of "How to read a book" if I have not yet read "How to read a book"? [tongue in cheek]

How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler is worth reading a couple of times.

I cannot stay without reading. If it happens one day, I am very nervous 🥴

had a stroke in 2020, tell me about physical impediment and walking normally...im not since then

The book behind you that has the Arabic title "التصوير الإسلامي" did I get it right? I speak and write Arabic fluently!

I think I found you, so to say. Didn't recognize you without your 🐈

Quam maxime dissentio. Videris et tecum dissentire errans in ambagiis. Necesse est minus curare quomodo discamus. Lege, ausculta, postmodum scribe loquereque, satis est.

It's like.

Do you always read books in mirror image?

Why is your video a mirror image?

Snap back to reality

8:59 ;D

Sounds like it’s time to dust off How To Read a Book and reread it.

Sir! 🙋🏼‍♀️ You should also play video games. 😏 ur brain will xplod3 with all those languages u have. 😎 and u can practice ur breathing exercises in the process. 😊

😎 I recommend cod mobile. 👌

Reading Skills: I HAVE NONE! I have a lot of books though... It's functional illiteracy that is my problem. And I am also much more interested in my own thoughts, then the thoughts of these frivolous writers. Really, the better the writers are at their craft, the more they suck! They all seem to add PAGES&PAGES of useless information... Like how much they loved the daughter of the light house keeper, when they are really writing about communist thugs... But the better for dissecting them like the frogs that they are! Then there is the Bible: can I rightfully dissect God like a Frog?!?!?! Oh, the sins... IMHO Traps/Sins: 1. Automatic reading 2. Speed Reading 3. Reading Silently (Interesting... I have read boring text books aloud into a tape recorder and reviewed the recording, while re-reading the text... I still have the cassettes!) 4. Not Getting Anything out of it (Yeah, I have to do this with Bible reading, as otherwise I just check off the box of a chapter of scriptures! Sad. imho)

I resent my stupid mind

First!

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🤭 don't worry if u start like a Mr. Potato. U sitting there not knowing what to do 🤭🤭🤭...