The Read It Write! Secret Sauce: Split Focus

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Honesty and courage??? That may seem like an odd description for a reading program. But we believe it does accurately describe the 'Read It Write!' approach. So much of what we are supposed to read is not essential to our task. We do not mean any disrespect to the authors who pour their hearts and souls into what they write, but a good reader will actively seek to essentially ignore most of it. And we also mean no disrespect to the all the teachers, professors and administrators who will likely passionately disagree with this approach. But the facts are the facts- most of what we read is not essential to good reading comprehension. Therefore, these portions should be identified as 'blah, blah, and blah' and deserve less focus when we read. 

In fact, of the material we have to read for school (and work), typically only 10% is essential to reading comprehension. This is the portion of the reading that creates the Big Picture. The rest of it, the other 90% is of much less importance to comprehending what we are reading. This larger portion consists of the introduction, details and analysis, and conclusion. It's not that we should full on ignore these parts, but we certainly do not attack them like we do the Big Picture elements. Our focus on the 10% or so that contains the Big Picture should be much greater than our focus on the non-essential details. That is what Split Focus is all about and that Split Focus is what unlocks Reading Like a Grown Up for all of us!

The illustration above really does highlight for us how different the reading experience is for us when use the Read It Write! program to Read Like a Grown Up. Starting at the sentence level and going all the way up to a full sized book, our program teaches you how to be in total command of the reading experience. And somewhat surprisingly, and very excitingly, we will see that less is more! When we limit our goals and objectives to just the Big Picture, and we reduce our focus on the intro and details (aka the Blah, Blah, Blah), we end up comprehending and retaining so much more than we used to, with so much more precision and clarity. And it's not even close!