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1、e a GoodStep to be a good writer-ToReader FirstMy dear students, you may feel queer that the title of this article is Steps to good comprehension, why here you offer us the reading process? Your surprise is understandable. But here, please be aware that a good writer must first be a good reader. Hav
2、ent you heard one Chinese proverb, Read 300 poems written in Tang Dynasty, you will write poems by yourself力? Yes, reading is a process of inputting the necessary information into our brain and helping us accumulating some necessary experiences for writing. It can also enrich our mind and stimulate
3、our thinking. Therefore, we should begin from reading.This introduction will explore and illustrate some of the fundamentals involved in the reading process. What exactly are the characteristics of a good reader? What distinguishes a good reader from one who is merely competent?The following is an e
4、xplanation of the steps required for good comprehension, the key to which is careful and thoughtful reading. The good reader is actively involved with the textthrough thinking, questioning, and evaluating. But these steps must be preceded by a more fundamental activity decodingmeaning the process of
5、 recognizing the individual words on the page. You must first pronounce the words as you read (to yourself, of course), and if you are unsure about the meaning of any unfamiliar words, look them up in the dictionary.Once you have decoded the words, you can begin the comprehension step. Good comprehe
6、nsion requires more than simply knowing what each word means. The real meaning of any text lies in the relationship the words have with one another.First, ask yourself, what is the author saying? What is the main idea of the passage?What does he or she want the reader to understand about the main id
7、ea? Try to paraphrase the writers ideas by putting each sentence into your own words . Then look at the relationship between the words and sentences. Do you see a pattern? How is the main idea supported?Once you have asked these questions, the next step is to evaluate what the author has said. Do th
8、e ideas seem reasonable to you? Has the writer provided sufficient support? What other information do you need before you can intelligently accept or reject the ideas? How do the authors ideas fit with what you know about the subject? Is there any evidence of bias? Of an underlying, but unstated mot
9、ive? To repeat: the good reader is an active reader, thinking and questioning all the way through the text.To illustrate what the good reader does subconsciously, let us practice with a short paragraph.Marriage was not designed as a mechanism for providing friendship, erotic experience, romantic lov
10、e, personal fulfillment, continuous lay psychotherapy, or recreation. The Western European family was not designed to carry a lifelong load of highly emotional romantic freight. Given its present structure, it simply has to fail when asked to do so. The very idea of an irrevocable contract obligatin
11、g the parties concerned to a lifetime of romantic effort is utterly absurd.Mervyn Cadwallader,Marriage as a Wretched Institution, Atlantic MonthlyAs you read through the paragraph, first determine if there are any words whose meaning you are not sure of. Three words, in particular, might cause some
12、difficulty. The first, lay, in the phrase lay psychotherapy is used as an adjective, so you can skip the verb definitions in the dictionary. Of the following three adjective definitions, which seems most appropriate?(1) pertaining to (属于关于),coming from, or serving the laity; secular; a lay preacher.
13、 (2) practicing psychoanalysis but not having a medical degree: a lay analyst. (3) of, or typical of, the average or common man: lay opinion .Definition 2 best fits the context, according to the context clue psychotherapy.The second word, freight, in sentence 2 is used in an unusual way. Since nowhe
14、re in the paragraph is there any mention of a railroad, we can infer that freight as it is used in the phrase a lifelong load of highly emotional romantic freight refers metaphorically to a burden.The third word that might cause a reader some difficulty occurs in the last sentence: irrevocable. Here
15、 you might try to break the word into its constituent parts to see if you can determine its meaning before you reach for the dictionary. Embedded in the middle is the root revoke, meaning to annul or cancel. The prefix ir- means not, and the suffix -able is self-evident, able to. Putting all of this
16、 together, then, yields a definition something like thisnot able to be annulled or cancelled a perfectly acceptable definition for this context. Finally, if any other words in the paragraph caused you difficulty, look them up now before continuing.The next step is to go through the passage one sente
17、nce at a time, paraphrasing each to yourself. To give yourself some practice, try your own hand at this step. Using a sheet of paper, paraphrase Cadwalladers paragraph before comparing your version with the one provided here.Marriage was not designed as a mechanism for providing friendship, erotic e
18、xperience, romantic love, personal fulfillment, continuous lay psychotherapy, or recreation.Sentence 1 says that marriage is not designed as a system to provide friendship, sexual experience, romantic love, personal fulfillment for ones ambitions, constant amateur psychological therapy, or play. The
19、 second sentence can be paraphrased to say that the Western European family (meaning marriage) was not intended to be burdened with a lifelong commitment to romantic love.The third sentence suggests that marriage, according to the way the institution works now, can only fail when partners are asked
20、to make that lifelong commitment. (Note that the words when asked to do so refer to the phrase in the second sentence about marriage carrying a lifelong load of highly emotional romantic freight. The technique of omitting a word or phrase from a previous statement is called an ellipsis, and it can c
21、onfuse the unwary reader. The author assumes that the reader sees the connection between the first idea and the unstated second one.)The final sentence can be paraphrased to say that it is ridiculous to expect marriage to be an irrevocable contract that requires the partners to commit themselves to
22、a lifelong romantic effort. Obviously, this paraphrase is not worded as elegantly as the original, but it nonetheless accurately restates the original.The next step is to summarize the paragraph. Cadwallader is concerned with the subject of marriage, specifically the Western European version of this
23、 institution. Further, since American marriage patterns are based on the European, we can assume that he intends his ideas to pertain to marriage customs in the United States, as well. The author wants us to understand that the institution of marriage is destined to fail because people wrongly expec
24、t that romantic love can be sustained for a lifetime.Each sentence in the paragraph builds to his conclusion: Sentences 1 and 2 state what marriage was not designed to do. Sentence 3 draws a conclusion from the first two sentences; sentence 4 restates the main idea and ends with an emphatic statemen
25、t of opinion, that our high expectations for marriage are utterly absurd.What support for these observations does Cadwallader offer? Since he concentrates on what the institution of marriage was not designed to do, there is little in the way of support for the main idea. The passage represents only
26、the authors subjective opinion. Although there are no facts or explanations tosupport the main idea, we must remember that this paragraph comes from the opening section of a magazine article and is therefore taken out of context. We could reasonably expect that the author will provide support for th
27、is opinion in the body of the article.Furthermore, the careful reader anticipates. A glance at the title of the article, Marriage as a Wretched Institution, suggests that the authors position will be negative. Since the paragraph emphasizes what marriage was not intended to do, we might, then, expec
28、t the author to strengthen his argument by writing a reasoned explanation of what marriage can accomplish.Finally, the good reader also asks questions that go beyond the scope of the passage. For example, how do other cultures view marriage, if it is not intended to perpetuate romantic love? What ar
29、e the reasons that people in other cultures marry? Are we wrong to expect that romantic love will endure for a lifetime? If other cultures have a more realistic attitude toward marriage, are their divorce rates lower?In the everyday world, it is obviously impractical to paraphrase every sentence you
30、 read, yet sometimes the practice of restating the authors meaning in your own words is useful if the ideas are complex or if you want to be sure that you are coming away with an accurate understanding of the original. (The statement that you havent really understood an idea until you put it into yo
31、ur own words is true not only for your writing but for your reading as well.)If these steps seem unduly tedious, remember that with practice you will get better and faster. Intensive reading of short pieces is the best way to promote critical and analytical reading, and that is the aim of everything in this text.