Newspaper “The Hindu” reading – My way

‘The Hindu’ newspaper is considered as a bible when it comes to Civil Services preparation and it is one of the most preferred news paper. So, everyone’s first and foremost step for Civils preparation would be to read ‘The Hindu’ news paper religiously. You can take this part of preparation as concrete basement pillars for constructing a house.

Before starting I have gone through many websites and read few strategies of reading it and making notes. I also went through several questions asked by beginners on it. The primary concern for the beginners was “Reading The Hindu and making notes is eating up lot of time” and saw few expert’s suggestions where they suggested few easy ways to cover in lesser time.

But, when it came to me, may be it’s my mentality, those quick reading solutions seemed to leave a feeling that I’m missing something or rather missing to grasp something or everything fully.

So, after following few different methods of reading ‘The Hindu’, I arrived at a final solution to put an end to the question “How to cover ‘The Hindu’ in lesser time” and the solution was simple. I will better describe it as a small timeline below.

Week 1:

Started reading The Hindu for the first time. Took almost 5 to 5 1/2 hours.

• Many topics were like bouncers flying over my head.
• Hardly understood the Editorials.
• Had to refer Dictionary for many words.
• Sometimes had difficulty understanding few sentences. Had to read 3-4 times to really get the meaning.
• Taking down notes was still not part of the process.

Week 2:

This is where I browsed for few strategies to read the new paper faster and tried few different things. Realized I need to improve on speed so started reading faster just for the sake of improving on time. Took about 4-5 hours.

• Few topics still were like bouncers.
• This time I was at least familiar with terminology, names, abbreviations but almost completely forget the next day.
• Still was referring to dictionary.
• Now editorials seemed familiar topics because I realized that at least one out of two was from recent news.
• Started making notes by simply copying the news article links and few other relevant links.

Week 3:

Wait a min. From last week on wards my target was to complete reading ‘The Hindu’ faster. So, in the process of reading fast, I ignored the very basic thing, that was understanding completely what I read. It was like my target was to complete asap rather than understanding. I hardly remembered anything from previous week. This was kind of scary. I know we need to revise to remember what we read. That doesn’t mean we need to go through the entire article for revision but that is what is going to happen if I continue like this. So, I planned to tweak my strategy and concentrate more on basic i.e. understanding the news article completely no matter how much time it takes and browsing for information and previous articles if needed. So, here is how it went.

• Very few topics were like bouncers. At least I used to get an idea which section of syllabus it belongs to.
• Started remembering few names, abbreviations. Recollecting capability improved.
• This is the point where I understood that dictionary reference is part of reading and our aim need not be to avoid it but to reduce the usage.
• Editorials were more intelligible. Even if I didn’t understand it completely I used to refer to old news articles related to that editorial and then understand them fully.
• Notes making has improved. Started referring several other materials, websites online and collected some good information related to each news which I felt was important.

Now, here is a catch. According to my new plan above, this week I started browsing for more information and started reading old news articles to understand the news completely and kept on collecting information for notes until I was completely satisfied. This whole exercise obviously took more time and believe me the reading time shot to 6+ hours.

Week 4:

Though it was taking 6+ hours, I went on – followed this strategy. Slowly and steadily, I started improving on all the 5 aspects mentioned above and you know what, I started reading faster, started understanding the news better, also had to refer comparatively lesser additional news articles and information to understand the news better. Obviously the reading time was reducing. In next 10 days with this same preparation I reduced 1 hour of my time and kept reducing even further day by day. I started improving on the notes taking part as well and each small improvement contributed to my reduction in time.

And here are few important point that I understood from this exercise of mine. I cannot guarantee if it works for everyone but may work for few who have my style of reading (I mentioned my style of reading in previous post http://wp.me/p463Xw-f) .

1. Initially, please don’t reduce or follow any strategy to reduce the new paper reading time just for the sake of reading faster.
2. Concentrate on understanding the articles better. Our aim should always be to fully understand articles rather than cutting the time.
3. There  may be experts who say “I read new paper in 1 hour”. Don’t panic! This is Rome was not built in 1 day kind of stuff. We need to understand that it takes time initially and gradually reduces.
4. We should not compromise on Quality reading for the sake of saving time (Quantity). This way we will remember better. Understanding should be our Primary goal and reducing reading time should be Secondary.

Finally, to Summarize the moral.

“Let the newspaper reading time reduce by itself. Do not force it”

I hope this articles helps or gives an idea about news paper reading for beginners.

Disclaimer: The timelines used above are not fully accurate and are designed only for better understanding. This may vary from person to person 🙂