noisystroller
New member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2014
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
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- Chinese
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- China
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- Canada
Here is an essay written by one of my classmates from Japan. If you just have 5-minute free time please check it and give me some advice or correct possible mistakes towards this essay.
I would be extremely grateful~~~
Everyone who is reading this review must believe that he or she can read — it’s too obvious. But is it really the case?
In the book How To Read A Book: The Art Of Getting A Liberal Education, Mortimer J. Adler holds the view that most people can’t read though they may read newspaper every day. So Adler wrote the book for those who can’t read, and to help them form the habit of reading.
The book consists of 17 chapters in 3 parts. In the first part, the author explains why he says many people can’t read and what caused this problem. Adler thinks that reading is like learning from a dead teacher. And the defeat of the schools in America then was that schools tended to teach students how to read just for information and to pass examinations, instead of teaching them to read for understanding. Reading for understanding is like communicating with the author, instead of just receiving something. For the readers who can’t read to help themselves, Adler gives some useful rules in Part 2, such as catching on from the title, seeing the skeleton, coming to terms, figuring out the proposition and so on. Readers are supposed to use these rules in their reading practice and form a habit.
How To Read A Book: The Art Of Getting A Liberal Education is a great book as an instructor for many people who can’t read. The brilliant rules Adler puts forward in the book are still used widely by readers today. And as an associate professor of law at the University of Chicago, Mortimer Adler uses many of his own experiences to demonstrate his thesis, which makes the book material and vivid, not abstract by just stating his views.
Adler explicitly points out that millions of people tend to read shorter and simpler articles in newspaper and magazines rather than great books. And this phenomenon still can be seen today. With the popularity of network, network novels have become more and more popular as a new literary genre, especially among teenagers. A great number of students are addicted to network novels and their studies are failed for that. Network novels are always superficial, so the students need to read more great books to cultivate their taste.
However great success the book has made, there are still some historical limitations in it. Mortimer Adler wrote the book in 1930s, which was still in industrial age, and people needn’t get so much information then. So Adler emphasized the importance of reading for understanding, rather than reading for information. But now we have entered the age of information. With information explosion, we have to improve our skills of reading for information and how to select useful information from books. In fact, we needn’t usually understand everything and we couldn’t, either. For example, very few of us can exactly know the principle of how a TV set or a computer work, but most of us can use a TV set or a computer skillfully. So reading is just as the same. In many occasions, our purpose for reading books is to use the skills we learned from them in our work and life. The reading purposes are changing with the time going by.
Everyone, including those who think they are expert in reading, should read the significant book for the methods of reading and should read some great books that Adler recommends in the book.
I would be extremely grateful~~~
Everyone who is reading this review must believe that he or she can read — it’s too obvious. But is it really the case?
In the book How To Read A Book: The Art Of Getting A Liberal Education, Mortimer J. Adler holds the view that most people can’t read though they may read newspaper every day. So Adler wrote the book for those who can’t read, and to help them form the habit of reading.
The book consists of 17 chapters in 3 parts. In the first part, the author explains why he says many people can’t read and what caused this problem. Adler thinks that reading is like learning from a dead teacher. And the defeat of the schools in America then was that schools tended to teach students how to read just for information and to pass examinations, instead of teaching them to read for understanding. Reading for understanding is like communicating with the author, instead of just receiving something. For the readers who can’t read to help themselves, Adler gives some useful rules in Part 2, such as catching on from the title, seeing the skeleton, coming to terms, figuring out the proposition and so on. Readers are supposed to use these rules in their reading practice and form a habit.
How To Read A Book: The Art Of Getting A Liberal Education is a great book as an instructor for many people who can’t read. The brilliant rules Adler puts forward in the book are still used widely by readers today. And as an associate professor of law at the University of Chicago, Mortimer Adler uses many of his own experiences to demonstrate his thesis, which makes the book material and vivid, not abstract by just stating his views.
Adler explicitly points out that millions of people tend to read shorter and simpler articles in newspaper and magazines rather than great books. And this phenomenon still can be seen today. With the popularity of network, network novels have become more and more popular as a new literary genre, especially among teenagers. A great number of students are addicted to network novels and their studies are failed for that. Network novels are always superficial, so the students need to read more great books to cultivate their taste.
However great success the book has made, there are still some historical limitations in it. Mortimer Adler wrote the book in 1930s, which was still in industrial age, and people needn’t get so much information then. So Adler emphasized the importance of reading for understanding, rather than reading for information. But now we have entered the age of information. With information explosion, we have to improve our skills of reading for information and how to select useful information from books. In fact, we needn’t usually understand everything and we couldn’t, either. For example, very few of us can exactly know the principle of how a TV set or a computer work, but most of us can use a TV set or a computer skillfully. So reading is just as the same. In many occasions, our purpose for reading books is to use the skills we learned from them in our work and life. The reading purposes are changing with the time going by.
Everyone, including those who think they are expert in reading, should read the significant book for the methods of reading and should read some great books that Adler recommends in the book.
