Language and Style

"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry."

For those of you who have been paying careful attention to your lessons and spending a minimum of 20 minutes a day on comprehension reading, you should be feeling a lot more confident about your abilities.

The idea behind reading is to get into the head of the author and really understand what he or she is trying to tell you. Some writers use a lot of terminology, which requires that you learn the vocabulary. Other writers use long, complicated sentence structure, which requires that you slow down a bit, and perhaps take notes in the margin of the book or magazine as you're reading.

We will cover one more aspect of reading comprehension, language and style, before we move on to improving your reading speed, which will help you get through some of the mandatory reading you're required to do for either school or your job.

Language

Comprehending what you read relies very heavily on the language the author is using. Naturally the obvious interpretation of that statement is whether or not the author is writing in the "language" that you speak. However, there are a number of ways a shared language can be changed to either improve or lessen understanding.

You were exposed to most of the first chapter of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Much of the language used in that book is different from the English language we use today, because certain words mean different things, and people put words together in different ways.

Let's go even further back in the English language to the time of Shakespeare. Here is an excerpt from Hamlet:

Mar.

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch

So nightly toils the subject of the land;

And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,

And foreign mart for implements of war;

Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task

Does not divide the Sunday from the week;

What might be toward, that this sweaty haste

Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:

Who is't that can inform me?

Hor.

That can I;

At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,

Whose image even but now appear'd to us,

Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,

Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,

Dar'd to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet,--

For so this side of our known world esteem'd him,--

Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd compact,

Well ratified by law and heraldry,

Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands,

Which he stood seiz'd of, to the conqueror:

Against the which, a moiety competent

Was gaged by our king; which had return'd

To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

Had he been vanquisher; as by the same cov'nant,

And carriage of the article design'd,

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimproved mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,

Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,

For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in't; which is no other,--

As it doth well appear unto our state,--

But to recover of us, by strong hand,

And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands

So by his father lost: and this, I take it,

Is the main motive of our preparations,

The source of this our watch, and the chief head

Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

This is from Act I, Scene I of Hamlet where Marcellus and Bernardo are joined by Horatio, a friend of Hamlet. Barnardo and Marcellus want Horatio to join them because they have seen the ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet for the past two nights.

To read this without preparing yourself for the elegance and complication of the language Shakespeare uses could frustrate you and make sure you never read Shakespeare again. Instead, it helps to share this experience with someone else, especially if your partner has some knowledge of the play.

Then, take this one section at a time. It might even help you to use an aid such as Cliff's Notes or Spark Notes to understand the meaning of each scene within each act, so that when you go back to read the older, more archaic English, it begins to make a bit of sense. By practicing a little bit every day, you can read something as complicated as Shakespeare and actually understand it!

Once you've managed to read through the entire play, treat yourself to a live performance of this masterpiece and see how much your enjoyment of the experience is enhanced because you understood the language the author used.

Watching modern dramatizations of Shakespeare's plays is enjoyable, but the true experience pales in comparison to enjoying it in the original form.

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