School Girl

How to Read Your Textbooks

The most common model for effective textbook reading is the SQ3R method. This method is:

• Survey: before really reading, scan over the headings, figures, and pictures in the assigned reading to get oriented
• Question: ask yourself some general, yet important, questions to answer while you read
• Read: read for comprehension, this is probably the most overtly time consuming step of this process
• Review: go back over the reading with an eye for key concepts and potential exam questions
• Recite: commit those key concepts to memory for the long term

Surveying is probably the easiest of the five steps. To do this effectively you need to look for basically everything that is not plain text. So look for titles, headings, bolded and underlined text, diagrams, tables, figures, and photographs and images. When you survey you will basically be orienting your mind to what you're about to read.

Questioning takes a little more skill to do effectively. When you're "questioning" a reading you want to be thinking of what the key concepts and lessons to be learned in this chapter are. For each section of the chapter (or even each paragraph if they're long enough) come up with a quick quiz-like question to answer in your next step. These questions don't have to be particularly detailed, and even if you ask yourself "what is the most important sentence in this section?" that WILL help!

Reading is the most time consuming part of this process. Make sure you're in a quiet place by yourself at a time when you don't feel particularly rushed (that might be asking a lot, but if you can get relaxed you'll find your comprehension is greater). Read for comprehension, this isn't for pleasure! As you go along, answer the questions that you came up with in the previous step. This is also an opportune time to use your highlighter. Though try to not highlight more than one sentence per paragraph, this is to keep you more focused and to help in the next step.

Reviewing is like coming up for air after your reading. Here you want to briefly go over the answers to your questions answered while reading as well as reviewing the content that you highlighted. Here you want to make sure you've got the key points down.

Recite, or commit your reading to memory, the information! This is tougher and likely one of the most personal steps in this process. For some people, the best way to do this is to write down the key items from the reviewing stage, for others the best way to do this could be by using flash cards. To effectively master this step you need to really evaluate how you memorize information for exams from lecture notes and the like.

This method is only one that can help you with reading your textbooks more effectively. Hopefully it will be more helpful than anything else. Also know that like any process, this is a process that you can modify if parts of it don't quite fit with your style. Each person is unique and will have different experiences with each thing they trip.

Tags: reading, studying, school girl, exam prep

Published on April 12, 2010 by Janet | Read all recent School Girl articles.