To Skim or Not to Skim

My last blog ended on a note about how time consuming searching through and skimming printed books can be. Taking this even further I’m going to say that skimming can be a major problem that can happen in printed and electronic texts. When people start hyper-reading, which James Sosnoski characterizes as filtering, skimming, pecking, imposing, filming, trespassing, de-authorizing, and fragmenting, that is the problem. A very popular way of reading electronically is when you only read the information you are in search of. This would be using the hyper-reading ideas of skimming, filtering, pecking, and imposing. You skim the text and pick the ideas you are looking for out of it. When someone picks and chooses the words they want to read that is when problems arise. That is when the reader ends up forming their own ideas about the topic they are reading about. This is because when they are only reading certain parts of an excerpt, they are only getting a couple ideas out of it, but not the concept as a whole. That is a problem because when you only take part of an idea from an excerpt, it may not be the idea that the author is trying to convey. In fact, you could be taking something from the text that is the opposite of what the author is trying to say!

 I was skimming reviews for a good pre-workout energy supplement and I found one that sounded great. I read the first line of the review that said, “Users say this is the greatest pre-workout energy they’ve ever used!” I thought, “Perfect!” and instantly added it to my cart. Unfortunately for me, I did not continue to read the review when I absolutely should have. After taking the supplement and going to the gym without a single burst of energy I went back to read more reviews. It continued to say, “Readers beware! The company writes their own reviews for this product and there have been studies about how ineffective this pre-workout energy supplement is. You will not notice a difference in energy levels! Save your money! Do not buy this product!” After $45 down the drain and a bad workout, I learned my lesson about hyper-reading. I learned that it is important to read the entire excerpt, or at least know the authors stance on the subject matter, in order to avoid misconceptions.

I’m not saying hyper-reading is always bad, though. It can be useful especially when you already know the authors’ ideas and when you are just going back to look for specific information. Hyper-reading can be a great strategy to help you reread something to refresh your memory. And it’s a major time saver, for sure.

One way hyper-reading has saved me precious studying hours this semester is by just skimming my chemistry teacher’s power points over the main concepts of the unit, instead of going back and rereading the entire chapter in the textbook. Rereading the chapters in the textbook would take me hours, whereas reading these power points only takes a few minutes, and it helps just as much. However, I’ll only read a power point after I’ve read the chapter it is about, and I do it just to reiterate the ideas and to make the content fresh in my mind before taking a test. I would never only read the power points as a substitute for reading the textbook because the power points are not as in depth and they only cover the main ideas. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t rather read my textbook online, however, because I would, since I like reading off of a computer screen better. Contrary to Birkerts’ belief, the online textbook would not be losing logic and concept just from being on a computer screen. Although he says, “the presentation structures the reception,” (Birkerts 122), if the books say the same thing, I would be getting the same information and concepts out of an online textbook as I would a printed textbook, thus the online textbook is the source I would go to if it were available.

Just be careful because hyper-reading is not always the best strategy when learning about a new subject, since that is when you can misinterpret what the author is really trying to say. This is what can lead to bad things, like bad workouts. To avoid problems like these, avoid hyper-reading unless you know the main ideas of what you are reading. Because of all the search engines out there, if you know what information you want to find, and you want to find it fast, electronic media will be your best friend, even if hyper-reading isn’t the main strategy you choose to use. Key words are the most important part of quickly finding information electronically and hyper-reading will just help bring you to these key words. Since hyper-reading is all about reading words, it is not letting images and impressions take precedence over logic and concept. Hyper-reading and keywords are not diminishing logic and concepts, but rather getting you to them quicker, especially with the use of Google.