Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Doren:

How to Read a Book (1940), Chapter 2

T H E LEVELS OF READING

Q. In no more than 400 words, explain the differences among the

four levels of reading.

In the preceding chapter, we made some distinctions that will

be important in what follows. The goal a reader seeks-be it
entertainment, information or understanding-determines the
way he reads. The effectiveness with which he reads is deter­
mined by the amount of effort and skill he puts into his read­
ing. In general, the rule is: the more effort the better, at least
in the case of books that are initially beyond our powers as
readers and are therefore capable of raising us from a condition
of understanding less to one of understanding more. Finally,
the distinction between instruction and discovery (or between
aided and unaided discovery) is important because most of
us, most of the time, have to read without anyone to help us.
Reading, like unaided discovery, is learning from an absent
teacher. We can only do that successfully if we know how.
But important as these distinctions are, they are relatively
insignificant compared to the points we are going to make in
this chapter. These all have to do with the levels of reading.
The differences between the levels must be understood before
any effective improvement in reading skills can occur.
There are four levels of reading. They are here called
levels rather than kinds because kinds, strictly speaking, are
distinct from one another, whereas it is characteristic of levels
that higher ones include lower ones. So it is with the levels of
reading, which are cumulative. The first level is not lost in

16
 The Levels of Reading 17

the second, the second in the third, the third in the fourth. In
fact, the fourth and highest level of reading includes all the
others. It simply goes beyond them.
The first level of reading we will call Elementary Reading.
Other names might be rudimentary reading, basic reading or
initial reading; any one of these terms serves to suggest that as
one masters this level one passes from nonliteracy to at least
beginning literacy. In mastering this level, one learns the
rudiments of the art of reading, receives basic training in read­
ing, and acquires initial reading skills. We prefer the name
elementary reading, however, because this level of reading is
ordinarily learned in elementary school.
The child's first encounter with reading is at this level.
His problem then (and ours when we began to read) is to
recognize the individual words on the page. The child sees a
collection of black marks on a white ground (or perhaps white
marks on a black ground, if he is reading from a blackboard);
what the marks say is, "The cat sat on the hat." The first
grader is not really concerned at this point with whether cats
do sit on hats, or with what this implies about cats, hats, and
the world. He is merely concerned with language as it is em­
ployed by the writer.
At this level of reading, the question asked of the reader is
"What does the sentence say?'' That could be conceived as a
complex and difficult question, of course. We mean it here,
however, in its simplest sense.
The attainment of the skills of elementary reading oc­
curred some time ago for almost all who read this book.
Nevertheless, we continue to experience the problems of this
level of reading, no matter how capable we may be as readers.
This happens, for example, whenever we come upon something
we want to read that is written in a foreign language that we
do not know very well. Then our first effort must be to iden­
tify the actual words. Only after recognizing them individually
can we begin to try to understand them, to struggle with per­
ceiving what they mean.
18 HOW TO READ A BOOK

Even when they are reading material written in their own

language,. many readers continue to have various kinds of
difficulties at this level of reading. Most of these difficulties
are mechanical, and some of them can be traced back to early
instruction in reading. Overcoming these difficulties usually
allows us to read faster; hence, most speed reading courses
concentrate on this level. We will have more to say about
elementary reading in the next chapter; and in Chapter 4, we
will discuss speed reading.
The second level of reading we will call Inspectional
Reading. It is characterized by its special emphasis on time.
When reading at this level, the student is allowed a set time to
complete an assigned amount of reading. He might be allowed
fifteen minutes to read this book, for instance-or even a book
twice as long.
Hence, another way to describe this level of reading is to
say that its aim is to get the most out of a book within a given
time-usually a relatively short time, and always (by defini­
tion) too short a time to get out of the book everything that
can be gotten.
Still another name for this level might be skimming or
pre-reading. However, we do not mean the kind of skimming
that is characterized by casual or random browsing through a
book. Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systemati­
cally.
When reading at this level, your aim is to examine the
surface of the book, to learn everything that the surface alone
can teach you. That is often a good deal.
Whereas the question that is asked at the first level is
"What does the sentence say?" the question typically asked at
this level is "What is the book about?" That is a surface
question; others of a similar nature are "What is the structure
of the book?'' or "What are its parts?''
Upon completing an inspectional reading of a book, no
matter how short the time you had to do it in, you should also
be able to answer the question, "What kind of book is it-a
novel, a history, a scientific treatise?"
 The Levels of Reading 19

Chapter 4 is devoted to a n account of this level of reading,

so we will not discuss it further here. We do want to stress,
however, that most people, even many quite good readers, are
unaware of the value of inspectional reading. They start a book
on page one and plow steadily through it, without even reading
the table of contents. They are thus faced with the task of
achieving a superficial knowledge of the book at the same time
that they are trying to understand it. That compounds the
difficulty.
The third level of reading we will call Analytical Reading.
It is both a more complex and a more systematic activity than
either of the two levels of reading discussed so far. Depending
on the difficulty of the text to be read, it makes more or less
heavy demands op the reader.
Analytical reading is thorough reading, complete reading,
or good reading-the best reading you can do. If inspectional
reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible
given a limited time, then analytical reading is the best and
most complete reading that is possible given unlimited time.
The analytical reader must ask many, and organized, ques­
tions of what he is reading. We do not want to state these
questions here, since this book is mainly about reading at this
level: Part Two gives its rules and tells you how to do it. We
do want to emphasize here that analytical reading is always
intensely active. On this level of reading, the reader grasps a
book-the metaphor is apt-and works at it until the book be­
comes his own. Francis Bacon once remarked that "some books
are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested." Reading a book analytically is chewing
and digesting it.
We also want to stress that analytical reading is hardly
ever necessary if your goal in reading is simply information
or entertainment. Analytical reading is preeminently for the
sake of understanding. Conversely, bringing your mind with
the aid of a book from a condition of understanding less to one
of understanding more is almost impossible unless you have at
least some skill in analytical reading.
20 HOW TO READ A BOOK

The fourth and highest level of reading we will call Syn­

topical Reading. It is the most complex and systematic type
of reading of all. It makes very heavy demands on the reader,
even if the materials he is reading are themselves relatively
easy and unsophisticated.
Another name for this level might be comparative reading.
When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not
just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a
subject about which they all revolve. But mere comparison of
texts is not enough. Syntopical reading involves more. With
the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to
construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of
the books. It is obvious, therefore, that syntopical reading is
the most active and effortful kind of reading.
We will discuss syntopical reading in Part Four. Let it
suffice for the moment to say that syntopical reading is not an
easy art, and that the rules for it are not widely known. Never­
theless, syntopical reading is probably the most rewarding of
all reading activities. The benefits are so great that it is well
worth the trouble of learning how to do it.