Reading a Textbook for True Understanding

Many students make the mistake of picking up their textbook and reading 50 pages
straight through front to back and assuming they are done with their reading assignment.
These students will often struggle to participate actively in class discussion and may not
do well on the tests. There are better methods for getting the most out of your reading.

The basics:

1. Multiply the number of pages you have to read by 5 minutes. That is the amount
of time the average college student needs to spend on their reading assignment.
Keep this in mind as you schedule time to do your reading. If you calculate four
hours of reading, you might not want to read 7-11 p.m. straight through. Consider
getting an hour in before class in the morning or over the lunch break - spread it
out a bit.

2. Divide the reading into 10-page chunks. The system described below should be
done on the 10-page chunk before you move to the next set of pages and start the
method over again.

3. Have a highlighter in hand, a pen or pencil and paper or notecards (depending on

your preference). Writing in the book itself is highly recommended, but if you
have some reason for not doing that, you might also want post-its and use those on
each page in place of writing in the book. If the book is already highlighted by a
previous reader (not ideal situation) please use a highlighter of a different color.

The system:

P2R

1. Preview

2. Read Actively (includes reading, highlighting, note-taking)

3. Review

Let's take a closer look. Feel free to grab a textbook to use as example as you read this
portion.

Preview:

You would most likely not travel to another country without getting a lay of the land
first. Often, we read a tourism book or look at a map. We might try to learn a few words
in the other language. If the country is similar to our own (England speaks the same
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language as the U.S. so feels more familiar) we might do less preparation than if it is
seeming very different from our own (Japan has an alphabet/language quite different
from the U.S.). This advance preparation allows us to get off the plane and have a sense
of what we know and don't know, what questions we will need to ask and where we want
to head first.

Previewing a textbook accomplishes much the same thing. Start by looking at the
beginning of your 10-page chunk. Read section titles. If no titles, read first lines of
paragraphs. Read the last paragraph. Glance over charts or photos used on the pages.
Read study questions or summaries that might be given at the end of the chunk of pages.
Now, take a moment to think about what you have just seen. What do you think will be
the main topic of that section? What do you already know about it from your childhood,
past courses or other readings in this current class? What is your biggest question right
now--what more do you need to know?

Now, you have a sense of where you are heading. Hopefully, you are a bit curious about
what you will be reading, have some questions in your mind and will be able to fit what
you read into a bigger context of where it fits into the whole chapter.

Read Actively:

Do not take notes or highlight as you read; this tends to break up your flow and diminish
your understanding. It also isn't very productive, because you don't know if the first
sentence is worth taking notes on until after you have read the third sentence, which
might be the real point of the paragraph. So, read at least one complete paragraph or a
short section before you stop to take notes and highlight.

Your first step after you read the paragraph is to highlight a phrase or two that were the
important parts that you'll need to know for future reference. Don't pick just words (too
little) or whole sentences (too much). Exceptions to this might be dates or definitions.
The idea is that you could re-read JUST the highlighted portion in a month and get the
gist of the paragraph without having to re-read the whole paragraph.

Now go to the margins (or your post-its) and start writing a question or two for the
paragraph. This might be "What years were considered the Renaissance?" or "What is
the meaning of metamorphosis?" When you get done with the entire ten page section,
you will go back and try to answer these questions without looking at the book . If you
need to cheat and look at the book, you should underline those highlighted notes to show
that you need to study that more. If you could answer it, you are doing well on recalling
that paragraph.

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This is also a good time to make some notes for class. Take a sheet of paper or a
notecard and write down questions that you want to ask in class (to understand a concept
or to ask how it connects to something else you've read, etc.). Write down any
observations or opinions you want to share with the class. You may want to jot down
page numbers and quotes that may be useful to discuss in class.

Some people prefer to also make these notes in their margins or at the end of the chapter.
That is fine.

Now read the next paragraph or short section (one column, for example) and do the same
process as above.

Review:

At the end of the ten-page chunk, take a moment and think about the section you have
read in its entirety. Go to a clean sheet of paper or a reading journal and jot down a
summary (in your own words, not quotes from book) of what you just read. Then make
some broad observations about how it connects to other things you knew or have read or
any feelings you might have about what you've read.

Go back and try to answer the questions in the margins.

Now start the whole thing over with the next 10-pages.

When you have finished the entire reading assignment, finish up your reading journal and
comprehensive thoughts and organize your note-cards or split sheet of paper so you are
ready for class tomorrow.

Basic Things to Keep in Mind When Reading:

Faculty members do not assign reading as busy work. They feel the material is valuable.
So, approach it with as much energy and creativity as you can muster. If it is not a class
that particularly excites you, try to relate it to something that does. A great example
might be physics and baseball. You'd be surprised at how much science can apply to
things like the trajectory of a ball or the impact needed on the bat to make a ball go a
certain distance, etc. If you are in doubt, ask the professor to help you relate the topic to
something you do enjoy and he or she might be able to help you connect the dots. You
might also consider your future career and whether you could make use of this
knowledge in small talk or in background knowledge for that type of job.

If something is not making sense, try reading it out loud. That can often help you process
the material in a new way.

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Try to keep your notes in your own words, not the words from the book. This helps you
avoid plagiarism in papers and helps you think more about the reading which will, in
turn, help you retain the material for tests or when it comes time to write a paper.

If you run into vocabulary words you do not know, try to look up the important ones. If
there are concepts or the book refers to an event you've never heard of, look at credo
reference or Oxford reference on the library's main webpage.

If you don't understand something you read, ask the professor via email, in person at
class, or get a tutor!

How to Read Closely: Making Sense Out of Novels

Reading a novel for class can seem challenging. Students are recommended to try to read
novels with a pencil in hand to make notes in the margins and notecards nearby for
writing down things you notice about characters or themes. You might prefer a
highlighter and a sheet of paper with a line drawn down the middle. Either works fine as
long as you have a place to jot down quotes, page numbers and observations from your
reading and to write down questions or comments you might want to bring up during
class discussion. Allow time to read and to re-read. Often you won't see meaning until the
second time through a text. Allow 5 minutes average per page of reading you have to do.
This is the typical amount of time required to digest a college text adequately. Try to
break your reading into chapters so that you get a break of a few minutes between reading
sessions. This may mean doing some reading in the morning before class, over lunch or
in the afternoon and not saving it all for after dinner.

Reading for Understanding

1. Don't take notes as you read. Get through at least a paragraph before you mark
anything. This allows your brain to flow with the words and build a picture in
your mind. You'll have a better sense of what was important in a paragraph if you
wait until you finish it.

2. As you read, try to be aware of patterns in characters, mood, word choice. Look
for connections between this part of the story and earlier sections. Look for
connections to things you've read before.

A Closer Examination

1. When you start to take notes there are many things you could look seek out in the
text. Start with a few basics and as you get more experienced, you will start to
find more of the items on the list below.
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 2. One method to consider is to mark these things in the book and jot in the margins,
but then also transfer noteworthy items to notecards. You can use one notecard
per character and sometimes one notecard per theme or argument so that you can
keep all examples of that in one place. Whenever you jot down a quote, write
down the page number to simplify paper-writing later. Things you might make
note of would include phrases about a character's behavior or development.
"Fearful timid behavior" p. 200, "fearful aggressive behavior" p. 231, "confident
verbal stand", p. 242. You might start seeing patterns that stay with the character
or note places where the character grows and changes.

3. A novel is expected to introduce up to 600 new words. You might not be able to
look up the definition of each word, but have a laptop or dictionary handy and try
to look up at least one out of every 5-10 new words you stumble across. Building
your vocabulary will benefit you during future readings and give you important
insight into the author's intent.

During a Close Reading Look For:

1. Descriptions: reporter-like accounts of person, object or event. The facts (what

you see, hear, taste, touch, etc.) Example: The sky was full of gray smog. We
walked down the alley."

2. Imagery: vivid or figurative language used to describe the same things as above
but with more exaggeration. Often, they will use similes, metaphors or make
assumptions about a person or situation as they describe it because they feel it will
paint a clearer picture in your mind or will help you, as the reader, connect to it
more personally. Example: "Overhead, the factory's boogie monster crawled
across the sky as we ducked between buildings hoping to escape it."

3. Interpretations by the author: imagery that is draw from speculation on the part of
viewer, these are not known facts. "Some evil overlord was wringing his hands
and laughing as his henchman covered the sky and blocked the sun and our hope
with one fell swoop."

4. Syntax: the pattern of grammar or the formation of sentences or phrases,

grammatical arrangement. You can notice this when you read something out
loud. Does the author choose to use unusual sentence structure, perhaps a one-
word sentence or putting the verb before the subject? What effect does it have on
the reader? How does it change the tone of the book? What does it tell us about the
person speaking if it is dialogue?

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 5. Semantics: This is about the meaning of words or the distinctions in meanings of
words or symbols. An example might be noticing the use of the word "poverty" in
a sentence. This can mean financially poor, but it can also mean lacking a
necessary ingredient. As a result, a person may be impoverished--lacking money,
lacking a soul, lacking creativity or soil may be impoverished of a certain mineral.
If a word doesn't seem to fit or catches your eye, it never hurts to look it up to
check for alternate meanings. If the book describes a person as "threadbare" that
might seem odd because that word usually means frayed and a person isn't often
frayed. But if you look it up, you'll see it can also mean worn out and a person
might be that quality and one can discuss the author's choice in using a word to
describe a person usually used to describe an object.

6. Look for foreshadowing, irony, humor and other literary devices used to move the
story along.

Taking Notes During Class Discussion

Students seem to understand how to take notes from a professor who lectures from an
outline and often writes points on the board or power points.

It seems like a more challenging process to take notes from a class discussion. Of course
each discussion can go in a different direction, but there are some basic points to keep in
mind regarding discussion notes.

1. Pay attention to your faculty member. If there are points that they hear a student
share and then elaborate upon, that means they probably thought there was
something "meaty" there; take notes on it and look it up after class if you didn't
recall that section of material.

2. Try to keep track of trends in the discussion; points or aspects of the work that are
repeatedly brought up in different ways. It might be indicating the importance of a
section of work and if you had not focused on it previously, you might want to
review it.

3. Make a mark in your notes beside those comments that come from a professor vs.
a peer. That might be helpful when you are studying.

4. Take time after class to reorganize your thoughts, write out more complete
sentences or look for a pattern in the flow of material discussed. Ideally this is
done within an hour of class to help the memory process.

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