Young Writers Society

I want to learn about anger. Would 5 hours of inattentive reading be more beneficial than 30 minutes of attentive reading?

Attentive reading is usually considered better if you want to learn things.

Sorry, i'd like to rephrase my question. Or maybe paraphrase it.

What i mean by inattentive reading is to read, most probably at speed but also understand and go along. But still, not paying attention to the difficult aspects or not putting much effort into making it more understandable. Just reading and understanding that which comes with ease.

By attentive reading, i don't really know what i mean. Just the opposite of inattentiveness or even something other than inattentiveness. Maybe Reading, then stopping to digest and remember.

Having this in mind.....

In general, if you're reading about a subject that you're not intimately familiar with, what you call "inattentive reading" will not really help you except in some rare circumstances. Yes, you may get the gist of what the passage is saying, but you're probably not going to understand the underlying cause or the true results—it would be like trying to skim a lengthy political novel; afterwards you would only come up with the basic conflict or knowledge, and probably not remember much of it.

What you call "attentive reading" is usually called "studying". It's a technique that students are often encouraged to use: Read a passage, take notes on the passage, stop and remember the passage, read your notes and read the passage a second time. Lather, rinse, repeat. In a lot of cases, this is an effective way of learning something deeply, but it can need quite a bit of repetition for the knowledge to become easily accessible to you.

In short, "inattentive reading"—5 hours, 10 hours, 5 weeks—is probably not on your side, because if you really want to learn about something and understand the more difficult concepts, you're going to have to make the effort to understand them.

If you don't make the effort in some way (whether it be reading in-depth and often, taking notes, re-reading, making flashcards, quizzing yourself), you won't understand or remember. Simple as that.

I hear people saying I've read 50 books this year. Do you think that kind of reading has at all any effect in their knowledge?

And studying as you said will of course take time. What if somebody wants to enrich their vocabulary? Would reading hundreds of books the inattentive way be more beneficial than the attentive? Because many words and phrases are repeated so often that they are gradually defined and eventually sink in.

With people saying they've read 50 books, it's perfectly possible and plausible for them to have read those 50 books and understood them. Reading quickly doesn't always mean reading inattentively—some people can read attentively at faster speeds than others.

And all reading, no matter how attentive or inattentive, helps you in some way. It just depends on how much it helps you.

If you want to enrich your vocabulary, then stop asking questions and start reading. Take word quizzes, play the Dynamo game at dictionary.com, make flashcards so you learn what the words mean rather than just what they look like—but start reading books, articles, essays, poems, non-fiction, fiction, novellas, magazines, everything. Keep a dictionary nearby so you can look up words you're unfamiliar with. Write them down. Keep reading.

At the end of the day, no matter what kind of reading you're doing, you're learning. How much you're learning and how well you understand the subject material has virtually nothing to do with how fast you're reading (unless you're purposefully reading fast and skimming). It has virtually nothing to do with expanding your vocabulary, either.

If you want to learn a subject in-depth, study it. If you just want to learn more words, read.

As a person who has read more than 150 books in 8 months, I can tell you that the numbers have little to do with it. The people that can read 50 books a year probably can because of some combination of the following:

1. They have been reading in that language all or most of their life and are very fast, fluent readers. (This is me.)

2. They have a lot of time to read.

3. They might be reading short books.

4. The other thing that they are probably doing is reading fiction books, which are generally much easier to follow than nonfiction books, and so they don't take as much effort to read and they can read them faster. (This is also me - I read way more fiction than nonfiction.)

In short, reading 50 books a year has little bearing on how much knowledge you gain from them - that's completely dependent on things like what type of book they are and how much time you have on your hands. The person may be skimming all of them and thus glean nothing, or they may have read all of them in depth. Or maybe they're reading books that don't require a lot of effort to understand.

Let me say that again - reading fiction is very different from reading nonfiction, and when people say they have read 50 books a year, most of those are usually fiction. Thus, they probably haven't gained the knowledge you're thinking of, although their reading speed, vocabulary, and comprehension benefits from reading fiction.


You say you want to enrich your vocabulary, and you want to know if it's better reading it the "attentive" or "inattentive" way.

Honestly, I don't think "attentive" or "inattentive" is a very good way to describe it. Even if you read "attentively," you may not understand what you are reading. You should read at whatever pace will enable you to understand what is going on. If you want to deeply understand it, then you may want to do what @Arkhaion said, but often that is not necessary for vocabulary building or reading fiction. If you come across a word you don't know, and you can't understand the sentence because of it, look it up. I have gained a rather large vocabulary simply from reading all sorts of things over the years using this method.

However, if the language you are trying to build your vocabulary in is not your native language, then you will probably want to read a lot more carefully and use dictionaries and translators more, so you can learn the words more easily.


If you want to learn something about a subject, then reading carefully and taking time to understand it is almost always better.

What is the purpose for reading?

If you're just trying to grasp a general understanding of various topics, without really trying to use these to, say, pass an exam or generally be in a context where you have to know the material in depth— passive reading is just fine. You expand your knowledge and enjoy it and it's good smalltalk, especially if you're going to be in circles where books are a frequent topic of conversation (businesspeople often do a fair chunk of nonfiction reading, because that's how they stay on top of the industry they're a part of).

Now, there can be problems when you don't understand the vast majority of the topic, at which point you either need to read at a lower level (the topic more broken down so the language is more accessible to people who don't know anything about the topic; basically from something meant for psychologists vs something meant for the layperson) or you need to study the higher level. Either one will work, although I tend to err on the side of reading a simpler breakdown before understanding the more complex texts.

But still. If you're not actively going to be using this information and basically just want to find out about it for fun, just reading for the sake of reading is fine.

However, if you're trying to read to give a presentation, or to pass an exam, or generally to actually know the topic inside and out, studying the material is the only way to go. You will have people who are educated about the topic around you, critiquing what you say, and if you can't answer their questions, your authority will be devalued. That's because your authority in that context is how well you know the material, and how well you've interpreted the material. If you can't measure up to people who know as much or even more than you do, then you've failed your job as an authority.

You can make up for some of that if you're a particularly good speaker, or you're good at crafting logic that makes sense on the surface, but eventually you'll have to bring up actual knowledge that is accurate and resonates with the majority of your audience. And in order to do that, you have to know and understand your sources— meaning you actually have to read them, even the difficult parts. Especially the difficult parts, actually, because the difficult parts are what really demonstrate the principles at a deeper level.

Of course, the more you do this, the better and faster you get. You also understand more, therefore the topics that had been difficult no longer are. So the time investment you sink in at the start pays off long term, as you stop having to sink in that much every time.

That being said— you'll broaden your mind regardless of how you read. If you'd rather avoid the headache and just read to skim, because you have fun reading and don't really plan on using this past your own mental stores of knowledge, go ahead and read inattentively. But if you actually want to use the information in a context where it will be scrutinized, then study your sources because you can guarantee that your audience has, too.

Based on my own experiences, that half hour of attentive reading will provide you a much better understanding of the finer points of the subject than the five hours of what is essentially skimming.

A lot to digest here. I've considered what you've all said. Sorry for so many questions. Its just that i'm so anxious to know whether what i'm doing is correct or not, or how i can improve. I'm aiming to becoming a storyteller in my community. And i am a bit into philosophy and morals. So i kind of want to think, write and speak on philosophy and morals in the form of stories or otherwise. If that makes sense.

I'm just thinking how i will reach that goal. Through reading and writing from a young age.

I'm just thinking how i will reach that goal. Through reading and writing from a young age.

You have answered your own question. You will reach your goal of becoming a storyteller in your community by reading and writing regardless of your age. And, with broadening your vocabulary, you have to read a lots of books. Since you know what you want— philosophy and morals, you better search for books that deals with the topic and read them. Attentively, of course! Besides, when you read your favourite genre, you will automatically will be attentive. So, that won't be a problem. But once you have accustomed to the habit of reading, covering a book or number of books will not be your concern.

Explore and learn!

Its just that i'm so anxious to know whether what i'm doing is correct or not

Allow me to break this down in the simplest terms possible:

There is no correct way to learn.

Every single person learns differently. Every single person reads differently. Every single person writes differently. Every single person gets from point A to B differently.

There are a million different paths to becoming a storyteller. There are a million different paths on how to do everything, and if you start asking professionals how they got to where they are, you'll find as many different stories and paths as there are people. Everybody falls into being a storyteller differently.

So long as you keep making steps towards the goal you will get there, no matter what those steps look like.

There is no "correct" path. There is no magic formula. We cannot tell you how you work. We can tell you the generalities for how people as a whole work, we can tell you how we work, but we cannot tell you how you yourself work.

So stop worrying about what's "correct" and use all that anxious energy to focus on where you want to go, get your head down, and start looking at what will get you closer to your goal. This could mean a whole multitude of different things from working in a museum to learn about the specialty you want to talk about to being an artist to get better at descriptions to being a mechanic and interacting with people when they're stressed, or even just to learn about cars because hey you never know when you'll be writing about cars.

Every life experience will help you with storytelling.

If there had to be a "correct" way to write, a "correct" way to get good at stories, it would be: go out and live, then get back home and tell stories. That is the single common denominator to every storyteller in existence. They go out and they do something, live something, then they come home and write something.

You can't get that by endlessly studying.

You have to go out and live.

Thank you so much everybody, for spending your valuable time just for me! of course this will benefit many like myself, but thank you again. My mind is back on track