How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio

by Naomi S. Baron

An engaging and authoritative guide to the impact of reading medium on learning, from a foremost expert in the fieldWe face constant choices about how we read. Educators must select classroom materials. College students weigh their textbook options. Parents make decisions for their children. The digital revolution has transformed reading, and with the recent turn to remote learning, onscreen reading may seem like the only viable option. Yet selecting digital is often based on cost or convenience, not on educational evidence. Now more than ever it is imperative to understand how reading medium actually impacts learning--and what strategies we need in order to read effectively in all formats. In How We Read Now, Naomi Baron draws on a wealth of knowledge and research to explain important differences in the way we concentrate, understand, and remember across multiple formats. Mobilizing work from international scholarship along with findings from her own studies of reading practices, Baron addresses key challenges--from student complaints that print is boring to the hazards of digital reading for critical thinking. Rather than arguing for one format over another, she explains how we read and learn in different settings, shedding new light on the current state of reading. The book then crucially connects research insights to concrete applications, offering practical approaches for maximizing learning with print, digital text, audio, and video. Since screens and audio are now entrenched--and invaluable-platforms for reading, we need to rethink ways of helping readers at all stages use them more wisely. How We Read Now shows us how to do that.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Books About Books, Psychology, Science

305 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 24, 2021

About the author

Professor Baron is interested in electronically-mediated communication, writing and technology, the history of English, and higher education. A former Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Fellow, she has published seven books. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008. Her new book, Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, will be out in early 2015.

Reviews

[Elsbeth Kwant]

This is a very timely and readable overview of what we know and don't know about reading for learning.
Research on reading in very slippery, because while we often think we know what we are talking about, there are so many aspects to reading (reading for pleasure or for learning, choices in medium etc), that context is everything to understand the research. Baron clearly, and -somewhat unusual to the field- impartially, describes these contexts.
As Maryanne Wolf describes it in her introduction: 'It leads us from a synthesis of information, to a foundation of knowledge, to a leaping-off place where we, the readers, are best prepared to form our own judgments with as much wisdom as we can'.
The reading brain, which can be as basic or as complex as the readers' education and experiences, is the scaffolding for our most complex intellectual skills. This brain is formed by the medium and so we are formed by our reading. Literacy is a tool for understanding how the world works - socially and culturally - to create inequalities. The more exposure people have to the written word, the better their overall language skills.
This book talks about concepts like skimming, scanning and linear reading, the differences in how we feel about touchscreens and clicking devices, gender differences in reading, it gives definitions and thoughts on what this might mean. The conclusion: Read more. Focus when you do. Medium matters.

[Owlseyes]

https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/readi...

[Cintia Andrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ótimas considerações e reflexões sobre pesquisas relacionadas a diferentes formatos de leitura para aprendizado - textos impressos, textos digitais, áudio e vídeo.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. Best thing I know of that explains and summarizes what current research shows about student reading, digital vs. print, etc. Lots of good advice, cautions, strategies.

[Eustacia Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book thinking that everyone can benefit from it. Here’s why:

1. We need to know about the different types of reading

I’ve always thought of reading as well.. reading. So it was a surprise but not really a surprise for me to see the different types of reading that exists. And one type of reading can be compared to more than another type of reading! To quote from the book, there is:

- Skimming (getting the gist) vs scanning (looking for a particular piece of info) vs linear reading (reading continuously)
- Extensive reading (wide range of topics) vs intensive reading (narrow topic)
- One off reading vs rereading
- Paying careful literary attention to the text vs reading analytically
- Deep reading (reading analytically) vs hyper reading (quick skimming, scanning, hyperlinking)
- Linear reading vs hyperlinks (follow online links)
- Single text (reading one document at a time) vs multiple documents (reading multiple documents at a time).

Now, there is no one superior type of reading. The type of reading you need to do is related to goal you have for reading. The book goes into a lot more detail about these types of reading, which is the first reason why I think everyone should read this.

2. We need to know how different mediums affect reading

Are ebooks superior to print books? Are audiobooks superior to ebooks?

As with the type of reading, the best medium to read definitely depends on how you want to read. The push to ebook and audiobook may not be entirely good, but that doesn’t mean that we should only be reading print. How We Read Now spends most of its time looking at different studies to see how the medium affects the way we read. One rather obvious thing which I didn’t realise until it was pointed out – people tend not to rewind when they listen to audio. That’s definitely true for me; I will reread a paragraph if I don’t get it, but if I’m listening to a podcast and daydream and miss a section, I’m more likely to continue rather than go back and relisten.

As an aside, I’m not sure if the statistics for the growth in print, ebook, and audiobooks can be wholly relied on because they leave out small publishers and self-publishers. According to the Alliance of Independent Authors, 30%-34% of all ebook sales in the largest English-speaking markets are self-published, so leaving them out may not accurately reflect the trends in reading medium choices.

Still, the research on the medium (and type of reading) is what counts because we know how we read.

3. As readers, we need to figure out how we want to read

This is probably the main reason why we should be reading How We Read Now. As a reader, I had a lot to think about after reading this book – should I prioritise print or ebook going forward? Am I losing the ability to deep read? How do I want my reading life to look like?

How We Read Now is for teachers, so naturally, Baron tailors her suggestions to those who want to teach. However, her suggestions can serve as starting points for us regular readers to think about the type of reading life we want to build, and how we can get there.

Overall, I found this to be a very interesting and necessary book. I have been feeling distracted when reading so this book prompted me to think a bit more about what I want out of my reading experience. I still don’t have the answers, but at least I’m thinking about it!

This review was first posted at Eustea Reads

[John Kissell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an essential book for anyone concerned with the future of reading (and, IMHO, we all should be concerned). Naomi Baron's "How We Read Now" is a beautifully written, deeply resourced survey of the current reading environment for print, digital, audio and visual. The spiritual and empirical "godmothers" of the book are Maryanne Wolf and Anne Mangen, two geniuses of the field; Baron is another. She lays open the benefits and disadvantages to each platform -- harkening back to McLuhan's "medium is the message" -- and makes a strong case for deliberate approaches, i.e., know what you want to get out of your reading material and which medium will best serve that purpose. I want to get the last chapter into everyone's hands: "Read more. Focus when you do. Medium matters." I have come across many of her sources in my own research (comprehension affordances of print vs. digital), so a certain confirmation bias may be at play in how much this book means to me, but I'm ready to discuss that, too.

[Nick Ferraro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is definitely geared towards educators and teachers, rather than those who are voracious readers of many different mediums and wanted to learn about the varying pros and cons between the choices, the latter group being where I fall. I have been Listening to more audiobooks recently because I find if I am tired of it is much easier to focus. I thought this book would be more about which medium allows for better learning but it was more about delivering affective pedagogy, which is fine, but not what I was expecting or looking for

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grabbed this book from a suggestion by a coworker as we develop a literacy curriculum.
I've been reading this through many lenses.
A 6-12 curriculum developer.
A mom of a high schooler and 2 college kids.
A former teacher.
An avid reader.
There are many good, researched based points shared throughout. There are things to consider through each lense. Although it's an informative text, it reads very comfortably and provides plenty of space for annotations and notes.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides some considerations regarding the medium for reading, whether you are a parent or teacher or reading for yourself. I wish there was a bit more clarity about results for specific populations of students (i.e., English Learners), but it did boil down research into a very palatable, readable experience.

[Eva Filoramo · Rating 3 out of 5]

As useful as matter-of-factly, Baron's essay is a must-read if you are interested in finding out whether (reading) medium matters. Short answer: yes, it does. Long answer: read the book and find out why and, mostly, how it is so.

[Dianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author is biased toward reading print, which, from the research she discusses, is not “how we read now.” This book is much more an argument for her view of reading than a laying out of the research. There many books on this topic; I recommend finding a different one.

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many excellent things to consider. I’ll be mulling this over and following Baron’s references for months.

Essential reading.

[Sunny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting topic but the text is so dry; list of references to scientific/survey studies, main conclusion and synthesis are lost.