I grew up in the golden era of standardized reading tests. We were taught to read for information, and our progress was tracked by multiple choice tests asking us, “What is the main point of the passage?” or “Which of the following is a detail the author provides to support the main claim?”
In retrospect, it was bad training for reading (and for writing), and it took me a long time to change my habits. I’ve become a slower reader, a re-reader, and a more reverential reader: I peruse the text to see how an author creates a particular effect, much as one might study a magic trick to deduce how it was done.… Lês fierder