Hi all,
Welcome to the second episode in my draft series
of “How do I study?”
Here I am telling you about an idea which is at
a higher level of complexity than the “realise then generalise” one introduced in
the previous episode. My today’s idea is based on what I call:
Personal
Intermediate Speculations (PIS’s)
This is simply that whilst I am reading a
text, I automatically and spontaneously generate branched hypotheses within my
mind about what I expect that text can lead to. Then I start to test these
hypotheses against the sentences that follow to get them proved, abandoned, or
modified. I keep doing this automatically all the time while reading any text,
simple text or complex text. This actually shapes the network of ideas in my intellect
gradually to result in deep and firm understanding, not only for the subject
under consideration, but also for many secondary old and novel ideas that are
related to that subject, and even for many of the “why not’s” that can be raised
around it.
Let me repeat this idea in other words here:
I am reading a text about something for example.
As I read the first sentence, many ideas come to my mind spontaneously and
without paying much effort about what this sentence means and what the
consequences of it are. I allow myself to speculate fairly well at this point.
That is that I let my thoughts go far in conclusions and draw stories that
might prove to be correct or wrong. I elevate some of the speculations that I
have synthesised to the level of hypotheses or even accepted theories for my
intermediate understanding of the subject which I am reading. I don’t stop
reading to do so; these are things that go on in the mind at the same time of
reading. Of course, I might stop sometimes and reread a sentence, and that’s
absolutely fine.
This way of reading applies to anything that I
read, in science, history, geography, economy, politics, linguistics, or even
while reading a novel or a list of university regulations for PhD students.
I have tried hard to find the best example to
tell you about. I wrote many long examples but I deleted them afterwards
because they haven’t really ‘appealed’ to me as I wished. Anyway, my thoughts have
reached a conclusion that a scientific article’s abstract might represent a
good example to deliver to you that which I mean. To be as realistic as
possible, I am looking for an article which I have never read before and I don’t
know its contents. I like to write to you all of my personal direct thoughts
and speculations on this abstract that I will read and how I am perceiving and
analysing it. I will try not to read the article or check out the soundness of
my speculations before I publish this blog article.
Now I am leaving you with this introduction, and
I will come back soon to complete. Next part will be an article’s abstract and
how I tend to read it, which is how I suggest that it can be read according to
my style of learning. I will publish this next part before reading the article
itself. I will then come back with a following part in which I read the article
itself and show you how I twist my abstract-based speculations in accordance to
the content of the article’s full text. I think finally I will write a
conclusion which summarises how can this way of “Personal Intermediate
Speculations” (PIS’s) be extremely useful in understanding simple and complex
texts in a very deep and comprehensive manner.
Next time: Abstract analysis
Next to next time: Article analysis
Later on: Summary and conclusions
See you soon, insha’allah!
