Reading For College

Overview

Learning the material from the reading means that you encode it into your long-term memory.  You have to actively attend to what you read in order to move the information into long-term memory. 

• You must FIRST store information sensory inputs (information) into your sensory memory. While your sensory memory has a large capacity, it can only hold information for a brief period of time.
• You must then move information from your sensory memory into your working memory. In order for this to happen, you must "do something" with the information. If you are not successful in moving the information into your working memory, it will fade away.
• Finally, you activate your long-term memory. When you move information into your working memory, you simultaneously retrieve related information and schema from your long-term memory.  By acting on the combination of the old and new information, you build new long-term memories. 

Strategies to Use before You Read

Set goals every time you read
Your goal should be to comprehend the important ideas and significant material in the reading.  Your goal is not simply to read the assigned readings. Force yourself to set off with the goal of comprehension and you will find it easier to use the strategies for effective reading.   

Understand why you are reading
Is it to study for exam?  Contribute to discussion?  Prepare for lecture?  Write a paper?  Different purposes require different types of comprehension and can shape your goals.

Activate prior knowledge in your working memory
It is easier to learn something new if you can connect it to something you already know. If you do not immediately recognize your prior knowledge, stop to ask yourself questions.  What do you know about the topic?  What have you heard?  What do you know about related topics? 

For example, when studying World War I you might ask yourself, What do I know about European international relations during the time?  Or, what do I know about the governments of individual countries?

Examine the Structure of the text

• Begin with the table of contents to understand the structure of the text 
  In a text book each chapter will cover a specific topic.  These might be part of a larger story or different topics within a discipline.  In a psychology textbook you might have chapter titles like biological psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, personality, and developmental psychology.  Each of these introduces the main subfields of psychology.  Understanding this will help you understand what you are reading.   Chapter titles in a history textbook of “The Producing Classes and the Money Power”, “Change and Continuity in In Daily Life, 1900-1914”, and “Radicals and Reformers in the Progressive Era” show you the narrative path and argument the author is taking to cover the material in American history in the early twentieth century.
• More specialized books might not have as easily recognizable chapter titles, but they will still provide some clue to help understand the structure.
• Novels might not have chapters that reveal structure.
• Next survey headings within chapters
  Headings fulfill the same function as chapter titles.  The author uses them to help the reader understand the structure of the information or to mark the flow of the argument.
• Read the preface or introduction, chapter overviews, and chapter summaries
• Authors will often uses prefaces and introduction to explain their argument, how they organized the book, and reasons for writing the book.  Understanding the argument will help you understand the structure of the text, making it easier to learn the material presented.   In many disciplines, different authors have different theoretical perspectives.  If you understand the author’s perspective from the start, you will have an easier time following the argument and learning the material.  In addition, you will understand what parts of the book call for further investigation and questioning on your part.
• Reading the chapter summaries gives you an overall all picture of the author's argument and will often connect the chapter with the previous and next chapters.
• By first reading the introductions and summaries you can learn the author’s main points which will help you focus on them as you read the chapter. 
• Identify whether the reading is expository or narrative
• Expository text conveys information
• Narrative tells a story

Strategies to Use While You Are Reading

Use active reading strategies to connect new information with prior knowledge.  There are two kinds of active reading strategies: Elaboration and Organizational. Typically, you will use elaboration strategies while you are reading and organizational strategies after you have completed the reading (go to organizational strategies).

Elaboration strategies
These strategies help you elaborate on the material to connect it to your prior knowledge and lead to further inquiry into the topic.

• Mark up the text while reading
• This involves much more than highlighting or underlining passages that you think are significant.  You should write notes in the margins to help you think about what you are reading and begin to process the material into your long-term memory. 
• Note where the text differs from the lecture or maybe includes a useful example to complement the lectures.  If you disagree with the author, note it in the margin.  Write quick notes in your own words to summarize a passage or to note an example that will help you remember a concept. 
• If an author is covering a series of points within a long passage, you can mark each point in the margin with a number, such as 1.  And then a brief statement in your own words.  This will help you create a structure for the material. 
• Write summaries as you read
• Writing a summary in your own words after reading a passage is a powerful way to remember the material.  Write the summary without referring back to the reading.  If you cannot do so, then go back and read the passage again.
• Learning to write effective summaries will take practice.  You want to include enough information to capture the argument or significant points, but do not want to simple copy the text.
• Tips for writing summaries
• Eliminate trivial and redundant information.
• Use lists.  Sometimes your summary might be a list.  Again, be discerning about what you include in the list.  Too much detail will not be helpful.  Remember, it is a summary.   
• Restate the topic sentences in your own words.  If a text does not provide topic sentences, then write your own.
• Draw pictures and create mental images to help you remember
  If you are having trouble remembering the key points, turn the written descriptions into mental images or even draw pictures.  This strategy can range from drawing the actual parts of an atom to using a diagram to represent relationships between different historical events.
• Ask yourself questions as you read
  Asking questions and making predictions keeps you thinking as you read and provides a way to monitor your comprehension.  These questions can be as simple as asking What is the main idea of this section?  You can also make questions out of the sub headings in the text.  For example, while reading a chapter on World War I  in a history textbook, you run across the Sub heading “The Debate over American Involvement.”  Possible questions to ask might be:  who was involved in the debate?  Why did some Americans want the US to get involved in the war while others did not?  What arguments did the two sides use? 

Strategies to Use after Reading

After you have completed the reading assignment, try the following strategies:

Organizational Strategies
These strategies help you connect material to your prior knowledge and aid you in seeing the connections between different ideas and materials.

• Concept Maps help you see the relationships between ideas and facts and should reflect how you think about the subject.
•  Start by listing the key ideas, concepts, terms, and facts from the reading.  Then arrange these in a hierarchy with the most inclusive on top, working your way down to the least inclusive.  
• To draw the concept map, start at the top with the most inclusive items and work your way down the page to the most specific items. 
• Draw lines showing the connections between the different items.  Label each line to show the connection.
• If you start a concept map and discover a better way to organize the material, do not be afraid to start over.  This shows that you are thinking about the material and making sense of the overall structure of it.  
• Charts and Matrices are useful for depicting many kinds of information.  Matrices are helpful to display information where two or more topics are to be compared.  First, list the topics you want to compare along the top of the chart.  Then list the characteristics you want to use to compare them along the side.   You can then list the defining characteristics for each topic.  This gives you a quick way to compare the characteristics of the topics.    
• Click here to see an example of a matrix used for note taking.
• Outlines help organize the information in the reading and can help connect the reading material to other class material. You do not have to use formal outlining techniques.  Just develop your own style of organizing the material in a hierarchical structure.  If the textbook provides an outline, you can use it as a starting point, but expand on it to make it your own.  Do not copy text from the book, but paraphrase material in your own words.
• One benefit of an outline is that you can integrate material from the readings, lecture, and discussions into one outline.  This allows you to see how all the pieces of the class fit together.

Other Strategies

• Ask general questions about the entire chapter and try to answer them without referring to the text or your notes.
• What was the main idea?
• How does this chapter relate to others?
• How does the reading relate to the lectures or discussions?
• Write a summary
  Writing a brief summary will prove that you have learned the material.
• Work with a friend to quiz each other on material.

Sources

• Scott W. Vanderstoep and Paul R. Pintrich, Learning to Learn: The Skill and Will of College Success (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003).
  

Example of Note Taking Matrix for the History of Economic Thought

Note:  Adapted from Dean Peterson and John C. Bean, “Using a Conceptual Matrix to Organize a Course in the History of Economic Thought ,” The Journal of Economic Education, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Summer, 1998), pp. 262-273