Reading with a dictionnary on the side isn’t efficient at all. Like we said and know with the Zeigarnik effect, we better have to write the word and come back to it later.

Dictionnaries are helpful only to find an answer to a well formulated question: what’s the meaning of this word?

Yet, using an encyclopediae as an extrinsic aid is about searching for facts, opposed to opinion. Facts are non discutable truths.

References


From: How To Read A Book, The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren