Never read more than a single paragraph without stopping to test your understanding of what you have read. At the end of each paragraph there should be a dead line; in fact there is a dead line and he who reads carelessly and quickly beyond this line need not expect to remember. Put your finger between the pages, close the book, and review the thought of the paragraph. Now make a definite effort to visualize the picture in the author's mind. It is true that some passages make an easier mind's eye picture than others, but all will make one which can be used to help in formulating a definite understanding of the author's thought.
You cannot visualize a thing which you do not understand. The aim of your study is to comprehend the author. To visualize the thought of the paragraph will test your understanding. Making of a definite picture will increase your knowledge of the essentials. Form the habit of visualizing what you read. Do not be handicapped by doubt. Make an effort to formulate the main facts of the paragraph into an expression of your own. If you are by yourself, where you can do so, state your thought audibly, not in the words of the author, but express the thought and the facts accurately in your own words.
No knowledge is yours until you can tell it to some one else.
Use this test and tell it to some one, or if no one is handy tell it to yourself, but do it audibly. This forces a definite expression which can only come from a definite understanding. Parents should question their children and encourage them in telling what they are reading and studying about. The audible expression demands definite knowledge.
The Student's Review Sheet
If the child is reading something which he will wish to review, as in studying a lesson, a good plan to follow is to have a pad of paper by the side of the book. After reading the paragraph write down upon the pad the expressions and thoughts which the paragraph conveys to you. This is an excellent plan in all cases where the audible expression is not practicable. After the lesson has been gone over in this manner, preserve the review sheets containing the synopsis of the paragraph. Then for review, before the examination, a quick reading of these written expressions of thoughts, which the chapter contains, will eliminate the necessity of a further reading of the entire text.
Apply These Methods
For a test read the following from "Brain and Personality" by W. Hanna Thompson. Follow the idea just suggested. Make a test, read slowly, form a mind's eye picture, think about it, and then tell the thought as nearly as possible to some one. All this may take some time and effort at first but the use of these ideas will quickly form the mental habit. Once reading a lesson in this manner will give better results than many careless repetitions.
"In some fishes, such as the carp, when the ganglia, which corresponds to the cerebral hemispheres (brain) are experimentally removed, they do not seem to mind it at all, for even then there is little, if anything, to distinguish them from perfectly normal animals. They maintain their natural attitude and use their tails and fins in swimming with the same vigor and precision as before. They not only see, but are able to find their food. If worms are thrown into the water where they are swimming they immediately pounce upon them. If a piece of string similar in size to a worm is thrown in, they are able to detect the difference and they drop it after having seized it. They even, to some extent, distinguish colors for when some red and some white wafers are thrown into the water the fish almost invariably select the red in preference to the white.
"It is much the same with a frog. If care be taken to keep the frogs alive after the removal of their cerebral lobes until they are quite recovered from the injury, brainless frogs will behave just like full brained frogs under like circumstances. They will crawl under stones, or bury themselves in the earth at beginning of winter, and after the period of hibernation is over, they will come out and diligently catch flies which are buzzing about in the vessels in which they are kept."