science

Incremental reading

Incremental reading is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Incremental reading rather than just read about it. In short: Incremental reading is a software-assisted method for learning and retaining information from reading, which involves the creation of flashcards out of electronic articles. "Incremental reading" means "reading in portions". Instead of a linear reading of articles one at a time, the method works by keeping a large list of electronic articles or books (often dozens or hundreds) and reading parts of several articles in…

Key takeaways

Incremental reading belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Incremental reading to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Incremental reading from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Incremental reading is a software-assisted method for learning and retaining information from reading, which involves the creation of flashcards out of electronic articles. "Incremental reading" means "reading in portions". Instead of a linear reading of articles one at a time, the method works by keeping a large list of electronic articles or books (often dozens or hundreds) and reading parts of several articles in each session. The user prioritizes articles in the reading list. During reading, key points of articles are broken up into flashcards, which are then learned and reviewed over an extended period with the help of a spaced repetition algorithm. This use of flashcards at later stages of the process is based on the spacing effect (the phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time) and the testing effect (the finding that long-term memory is increased when some of the learning periods are devoted to retrieving the to-be-remembered information through testing). It targets people trying to learn for life a large amount of information, particularly if it comes from various sources.

History The method itself is often credited to the Polish software developer Piotr Woźniak. He implemented the first version of incremental reading in 1999 in SuperMemo 99, providing the essential tools of the method: a prioritized reading list and the possibility to extract portions of articles and to create cloze deletions. The term "incremental reading" itself appeared the following year with SuperMemo 10 (2000). Later SuperMemo programmes subsequently enhanced the tools and techniques involved, such as webpage imports, material overload handling, etc. Limited incremental reading support for the text editor Emacs appeared in 2007. An Anki add-on for incremental reading was later published in 2011; for Anki 2.0 and 2.1, another add-on is available. Incremental reading was the first of a series of related concepts invented by Piotr Woźniak: incremental image learning, incremental video, incremental audio, incremental mail processing, incremental problem solving, and incremental writing. "Incremental learning" is the term Wozniak uses to refer to those concepts.

Method When reading an electronic article, the user extracts the most important parts (similar to underlining or highlighting a paper article) and gradually distills them into flashcards. Flashcards are information presented in a question-answer format (making active recall possible). Cloze deletions are often used in incremental reading, as they are easy to create from the text. Both extracts and flashcards are scheduled independently from the original article. With time and reviews, articles are supposed to be gradually converted into extracts and extracts into flashcards. Hence, incremental reading is a method of breaking down information from electronic articles into sets of flashcards. Contrary to extracts, flashcards are reviewed with active recall. This means that extracts such as "George Washington was the first U.S. president" must ultimately be converted into questions like "Who was the first U.S. president?" (answer: George Washington), or cloze deletions like "[...] was the first U.S. president." This flashcard creation process is semi-automated – the reader chooses which material to learn and edits the precise wording of the questions. In contrast, the software assists in prioritizing articles and making the flashcards and does the scheduling: it calculates the time for the reader to review each chunk according to the rules of a spaced repetition algorithm. This means that all processed pieces of information are presented at increasing intervals. Individual articles are read in portions proportional to the attention span, which depends on the user, their mood, the article, etc. This allows for a substantial gain in attention, according to Piotr Wozniak. Without spaced repetition, the reader would quickly get lost in the glut of information when studying dozens of subjects in parallel. However, spaced repetition makes it possible to retain traces of the processed material in memory.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Incremental reading

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Incremental reading claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Incremental reading before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Incremental reading ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Incremental reading

In research: Incremental reading appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Incremental reading in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Incremental reading is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Learning, Learning methods, Reading (process), so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Incremental reading outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Incremental reading in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Incremental reading means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Incremental reading out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Incremental reading in simple terms?

Why does Incremental reading matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Incremental reading?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Incremental reading.