Exam Prep and 'Thinking Reading'

Don’t let your study world be consumed with reading and rushing, rather than concentrating. Reading comprehension is everything when it comes to exams. Here’s an example: The legal structure of a condominium is set out in the declaration and description, and typically consists of individually-owned units and common property held by unit owners in joint tenancy.  True or false? False. The entire statement is correct except for the last two words. Common property is owned as tenants-in-common. Read every word carefully.

We’ll call it thinking reading. For many, thinking reading is not aggressively practised in real life. We all have the ability, but often don’t develop this particular skill. Today’s adults often avoid brain overload by skimming newspapers, flipping TV channels, and blocking out all but the essentials. Whether it’s a cell phone or hi-tech features on a car, we cut to the chase. Let’s use it and learn about it later. There’s even a marketing phrase for hard-to-learn, feature-rich technology products. It’s called feature cram. Feature cram lengthens the learning curve. (Translation: It’s harder to quickly understand something.) Today’s humans cope by sidestepping the instruction book and getting on with their lives. As a matter of pure self defence, we settle for the absolute essentials: Just give me the facts. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for all the details in this exploding information society. Think about it. We didn’t even have enough time to carefully read and understand the VCR instruction manual before the machine was obsolete. Exams are different. Every word counts.