For Analytical reading, we need to find the important keywords and find how the author is employing it. Not all the words the author is using are equally important. Finding the important keywords will help analysis and understanding.
Like the word “reading” which can have multiple meanings:
- Read for entertainment
- Read for knowledge
- Read for informations
- Read as the art of reading
By keywords, we could also spot the lexical field and understand the meaning given by the author to each words. Like Adam Smith with the words wealth, capital, growth… Or Darwin with the words species, genes, variety, selection…
It is also one of the first question we should ask ourselves: Is the keyword has an ambiguous (multiple) meanings, or is it obvious? If we don’t understand a word, we firstly should try to understand it by its context. Just like a definition in a dictionnary that depict the word using context.
We should also be able to determinate whether two different keywords with the same meaning are real synonyms or different concepts. This will help to grow our ability to understand a book deeper, useful for analytical reading.
From: How To Read A Book, The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren