Whether you are worrying over an English exam or given Great Expectations, quick reading and comprehension for English prose is a valuable skill to learn and practise. From short stories to novel series, being able to read and digest storylines, characters, and themes quickly and effectively is crucial to managing workloads, preparing for exams, and making the most out of English literature lessons. Here is some advice for students who want to understand and analyse prose texts efficiently and masterfully.
Context
Before you start reading a story, it is helpful to know a little bit about its context. This may include historical context, such as when it was written, by whom, and who its intended audience was. This background information can save you a lot of confusion later. For example, you may realise that an older text uses slightly different vocabulary or the same words with a different meaning. Or that there is crucial information about story that the author and audience would know. For example, you aren’t going to get very far reading Pride and Prejudice without understanding the importance of marriage to women in the nineteenth century.
The literary context of a story can be just as helpful. This might be the genre or format. Is it a short story, series, or part of a novel? Is it realism or are there science fiction or fantasy elements? What language was it originally written in? Knowing the genre and format can help you identify important features of the story, such as when you should expect a sudden change in the plot or a resolution. And, like historical context, it can clarify confusing elements, such as science fiction language in 1984 or social commentary in Alice in Wonderland.
Skimming, Scanning, and Close Reading
Skimming is one of the most important techniques for reading quickly and efficiently. When you skim a piece of prose, you look over the text quickly to gather basic information. Who is in the scene? Where are they and what are they doing? What are the big changes that happen in the scene? Look for the beginnings and ends of paragraphs–often key information is put in obvious place. And if you seem to have missed something, go back and look for what information you might have skipped. However, do not worry too much about knowing every word or phrase: the point of skimming is to get the general idea of a passage.
Scanning and close reading are most useful when answering comprehension questions. Scanning means looking for a particular piece of information. A question might ask what a character states as her reason for leaving. A student would scan the text for the character’s name and mention of leaving in order to find the answer. Close reading involves dissecting a short piece of text for as much information as possible. After skimming, a student can find a key scene that they would like to close read. Or, a short passage may be assigned on an exam. In this passage, the student would look for details of plot, character, setting, symbolism, and themes, as discussed below.
Understanding Key Narrative Features
When skimming a text for comprehension, it is helpful to note key narrative features. These include characters, settings, and important plot points. Different students may have different ways of identifying these features, including making a list or diagram of characters (and their key characteristics and relationships) as they emerge, drawing or visualising characters and settings, or constructing a plot diagram including opening, rising action, climax, and denouement. Students should experiment with different methods until they find the one that is most useful, though this may change depending on the genre or length of text.
Identifying characters, setting, and plot helps you consolidate the most important information about a text. It guides your skimming and scanning techniques, building these muscles in preparation for an exam. And it helps provide the baseline context for close reading or other more complicated forms of analysis. With a clear understanding of key narrative elements, you can quickly gather what is happening in each new scene. Moreover, you can watch and anticipate the relationships between different elements–between characters, between characters and settings, or between characters, setting, and plot events–change throughout the course of the story, strengthening your understanding of how a narrative is constructed and gains meaning.
Thinking about Theme and Symbolism
For more advanced students, comprehension will include thinking about the themes of a story and its symbolism. This is more complicated the previously described quick reading techniques and narrative features, but builds on all of these skills and knowledge. Historical and literary context can queue students into symbols and themes that might be found in other texts (like a Shakespeare play) or real life (like historical dress, or workers’ rights). Knowing about the Fates in Greek Mythology can help you understand the knitting women in A Tale of Two Cities. Following a character’s background, traits, and storyline will help you to understand their choices. And having a good grasp of the basic narrative elements will provide the backbone of a close reading analysis.
In addition to a grounding in the basics of the text, a student needs instincts and inferences to understand the themes of a narrative: why something happens and what it means. Some students will be able to identify the most poignant, symbolic moments of a text whilst skim-reading it. They can then close read the scenes for their symbolism, emotional weight, and meaning. Other students may approach the themes of a text more analytically, by looking at charts or diagrams of plots and characters and interpreting the relationships between narrative features and how they change over the course of the story. With a strong grounding in the basics features of the text and a willingness to read between the lines, they can come up with an original analysis of the themes of a literary work.
Quick reading and comprehension of prose texts is something that takes time and practice. However, by developing these techniques, students can become masters of English comprehension and have the skills needed for exams, school, and reading in everyday life.
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