Effective reading is essential to a successful and enjoyable university career. Learning to manage a large volume of reading and useful reading skills will help you get the most out of your reading. As you progress through your university career the difficulty of your texts will likely increase. Developing useful reading strategies will help you understand the information you are reading.
It is important to keep up with your reading; this can be challenging. Here are a few tips:
Consider how this connects with what you have already read on the subject? Are there any common 'big ideas' or arguments that writers usually address?
Consider how relevant the text is to the reason you are reading the article?
Use skimming and scanning techniques of the text to get a general idea of its contents.
Reflect on the ideas and information in the text. Think about what you read.
Consider the information presented in the text and your own experiences and knowledge.
Fully understand the meaning of the text.
Summarize: you will find it useful to create your own summary of what you have read. This will help you focus and remember what you have been reading.
Keep it brief
Note the author's conclusions and introductions, in your own words.
Try to explain what you have learned to someone else.
Ask yourself questions to guide your summary: What? Why? When? Where? How?
Try to think of the likely questions that might occur from the text.
It is helpful to be aware of why you are reading a text, what is your purpose. Are you reading for fun? Are you reading because you are looking for details? Do you only want an overview of the text and the main conclusions of the author? You will use different strategies depending on your reading goal. For example, you may need to read the entire text for specific details, but not if you only want to get an idea about the conclusions of a text.
There are several strategies you can use to help improve your reading speed and understanding.
Skimming means reading through a text quickly, horizontally, to get a general understanding of the content and its usefulness.
Before reading an academic text in depth, skimming the text will often help you understand what the text is about or identify key bits of information. This strategy helps you identify the relevance and can lead to a greater depth of understanding.
To skim a text:
Scanning means to read through a text quickly, vertically or diagonally, to locate single words, facts, dates, names, or details.
Scanning is looking for specific information, such as keywords, dates, statistics or authors' names.
To scan a text:
Highlight important key terms and new terms or vocabulary. Keep a dictionary handy to identify key terms as you read.
Reading for detail is when you start to concentrate on the written material, looking to gather specific information or evidence. It will provide you with a more in-depth understanding of the information, facts, positions and views on a topic.
To read for detail:
