Reading a text with others should be done in groups of two to perhaps eight people. The group should be small enough such that everyone can learn everyone’s names, and that there is enough time for all participants to participate over the span of a two hour period.
The group should proceed by taking turns reading out loud from the text. Each reader should read enough to have something to comment on. In very dense texts, this can be a mere sentence. In less dense texts, a paragraph will suffice. In still less dense texts, it can suffice to read a key sentence or topic sentence of a section instead of reading entire pages out loud.
Each round of reading, the reader should strive to give their initial reactions to the reading. The best practice is to attempt to rephrase or summarize what they have just read, putting the text into their own words. This is a difficult practice to engage in, as it is hard for most people to read out loud while simultaneously comprehending what they read. For this reason, the group should move slowly. It is okay to sit in silence for as long as it takes after the reader has read the text while they think about and reread their text. If they cannot give a summary of what they have read, the reader should try to give something particular they’re confused about that goes beyond merely saying they took nothing away. They can try to formulate a question, or make educated guesses, perhaps pondering “this could be saying…”
After the reader has given their initial comment, the floor is open up to anyone else who wants to comment or ask questions. Once discussion concludes, the reading continues, moving onto another reader.
The aim of this practice is to collaboratively interpret a text. Ideally, one should have read the text already before the group meets, so that you are reading the text together for a second time, but it must be kept in mind this doesn’t always happen for all or any members of the group. Reading well involves not just the bare act of reading, but working to put thoughts into words and becoming coherent to others. For this reason, it is reasonable to say that a text isn’t really “read” until reading it over many times.
Reading closely is difficult, and it is also often embarrassing in a way that can be productively humbling, especially if the group is supportive of one another. Reading in this way is hermeneutical: the group moves forward by a common effort to understand the text. This can be understood as a dialectical practice, developing interpretation by understanding the relationships between the parts and the whole in their interplay.
The text functions as the guiding object of the group, and if there are disagreements, they must be negotiated through the text to pinpoint the interpretive pivot at which opinions diverge. In this way, difference of opinion can be recognized and vocalized without either making it a personal issue floating above the text nor a purely textual issue in which the text is treated as having a kind of hidden meaning available only to one correct reading.
In sum: go slow, center the text, and talk through it.