The levels aren't separate processes but a progression where each level depends on mastering the one before.

Elementary Reading

This is the first reading stage and involves the physical act of reading words on the page. When we think of literacy, we are referring to elementary reading.

The primary question is:

What does the sentence say?

Inspectional Reading

The objective is to learn as much as you can through surface reading. In other words, if given a time constraint, you're trying to learn what you can about the book.

The primary question is:

What is the book about?

Analytical Reading

This is what most people regard as reading comprehension. It is reading to understand without a time constraint. This is the highest level of reading you can perform for a single book.

Four questions to ask while reading analytically:

What is the book about as a whole?
What is being said in detail, and how?
Is the book true, in whole or in part?
What of it?

Syntopical Reading

This is the highest reading level and involves reading multiple books on a subject, also referred to as "surround the topic". This leads to the greatest level of understanding by learning and comparing different views about the topic. At the end of this stage, "the reader is able to construct an analysis on the subject that may not be in any of the books".

Five steps in syntopical reading

Find the relevant passages
1. Find the passages that align with your aim in reading the books.
Bring the authors to terms
1. Establish some consistency of terms to create a proper comparison between authors.
Get the questions clear
1. Establish questions whose answers satisfy your aim(s) in reading the books and frame them so that all authors can attempt, explicitly or implicitly, to answer them.
Defining the issues
1. Determine and establish each author's position on the questions you've laid out.
Analyzing the discussion
1. Lay out the questions, the answers to those questions, and support for those answers. If the topic is contentious, you're unlikely to find unanimous agreement, so it's enough to establish the arguments and the detailed evidence supporting them.

As you can see, there is a lot more to reading than you may have realized. If you want to elevate your understanding of a topic, having a basic grasp of the levels of reading is a step closer to getting you there. Although reading the entire book might be overkill for most people—and Adler would likely tell you not to do that anyway—it creates a solid foundation for getting the most out of reading.

4 Levels of Reading from Mortimer Adler's How to Read A Book

The levels aren't separate processes but a progression where each level depends on masteri

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