Have you ever noticed that sometimes the things you don’t know, that you don’t think are important, turn out to be the critical missing piece to your success? A strange word called schema is just like that. It’s the missing piece to being able to read faster while improving the comprehension that most people are looking to find. This article will explain the importance of outline in speed reading.
I learned about the outline while studying how to teach reading in graduate school. It sounds like a very technical word, because they like to use big words in college. Fortunately, it has a very simple meaning. Schema is your database. It’s what you already know before you even start reading. For example, if you read this sentence: “the man wore a blue hat”. Did its meaning puzzle you? Not why not? Because you know the meaning of the words man, dress, blue and hat. What if you didn’t know the meanings? Now how hard would it be to read the award? Very difficult. You are continually using your existing database to decode text.
Schema is your map. It is how you see and represent the world in your mind. For example, an astronomer would view the sunrise astronomically. They would perceive the rotation of the Earth causing the illusion of the Sun rising over the horizon. It is actually the movement of the Earth that makes the Sun appear to move. An artist would watch the sunrise and he would see the beautiful variety of colors in the sky. A physicist would understand that colors perceived by the eye are caused by light scattering because at the horizon light has to travel through more air, causing it to bend and refract into a screen of colors. Notice how each of these individuals perceived the exact same event differently? It was their map or way of viewing the world that affected how they perceived the event.
Schema is your experience. For example, my first marriage was a storybook marriage. Unfortunately, Stephen King wrote the book. I thought happily married was an oxymoron. You know, like military intelligence, honest politician and job security. Some words just don’t seem to go together. At that point in my life I couldn’t conceive or be happy and married at the same time. Now I am married to my perfect partner and I am totally happy. But my experiences influenced my understanding of the word marriage.
When you read words in a book, your database, your map, and your experiences affect how you understand and perceive the information. Outline is a very important part of text comprehension while reading at speed, and even while reading slowly.