READING STRATEGICALLY

Thinking about What You Want to Learn

To learn anything, we need to place new information into the context of what we already know. For example, to understand photosynthesis, we need to already know something about plants, energy, and oxygen, among other things. To learn a new language, we draw on similarities and differences between it and any other languages we know. A method of bringing to conscious attention our current knowledge on a topic and of helping us articulate our purposes for reading is a list-making process called KWL+. To use it, create a table with three columns:

Before you begin reading a text, list in the “K” column what you already know about the topic. Brainstorm ideas, and list terms or phrases that come to mind. Then group them into categories. Also before reading, or after reading the first few paragraphs, list in the “W” column questions you have that you expect, want, or hope to be answered as you read. Number or reorder the questions by their importance to you.

Then, as you read the text or afterward, list in the “L” column what you learned from the text. Compare your “L” list with your “W” list to see what you still want or need to know (the “+”)—and what you learned that you didn’t expect.

Previewing the Text

It’s usually a good idea to start by skimming a text—read the title and subtitle, any headings, the first and last paragraphs, the first sentences of all the other paragraphs. Study any illustrations and other visuals. Your goal is to get a sense of where the text is heading. At this point, don’t stop to look up unfamiliar words; just mark them in some way to look up later.

Adjusting Your Reading Speed to Different Texts

Different texts require different kinds of effort. Some that are simple and straightforward can be skimmed fairly quickly. With academic texts, though, you usually need to read more slowly and carefully, matching the pace of your reading to the difficulty of the text. You’ll likely need to skim the text for an overview of the basic ideas and then go back to read it closely. And then you may need to read it yet again. (But do try always to read quickly enough to focus on the meanings of sentences and paragraphs, not just individual words.) With visual texts, too, you’ll often need to look at them several times, moving from gaining an overall impression to closely examining the structure, layout, and other visual features—and exploring how those features relate to any accompanying verbal text.

Looking for Organizational Cues

As you read, look for cues that signal the way the text’s ideas are organized and how each part relates to the ones around it.

The introductory paragraph and thesis often offer a preview of the topics to be discussed and the order in which they will be addressed. Here, for example, is a typical thesis statement for a report:Types of prisons in the United States include minimum and medium security, close security, maximum security, and supermax. The report that follows should explain each type of prison in the order stated in the thesis.

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Transitions help GUIDE READERS in following the direction of the writer’s thinking from idea to idea. For example, “however” indicates an idea that contradicts or limits what has just been said, while “furthermore” indicates one that adds to or supports it.

Headings identify a text’s major and minor sections, by means of both the headings’ content and their design.

Thinking about Your Initial Response

Some readers find it helps to make brief notes about their first response to a text, noting their reaction and thinking a little about why they reacted as they did.

What are your initial reactions? Describe both your intellectual reaction and any emotional reaction, and identify places in the text that caused you to react as you did. An intellectual reaction might consist of an evaluation (“I disagree with this position because . . .”), a connection (“This idea reminds me of . . .”), or an elaboration (“Another example of this point is . . .”). An emotional reaction could include approval or disapproval (“YES! This is exactly right!” “NO! This is so wrong!”), an expression of feeling (“This passage makes me so sad”), or one of appreciation (“This is said so beautifully”). If you had no particular reaction, note that, too.

What accounts for your reactions? Are they rooted in personal experiences? aspects of your personality? positions you hold on an issue? As much as possible, you want to keep your opinions from interfering with your understanding of what you’re reading, so it’s important to try to identify those opinions up front.

Dealing with Difficult Texts

Let’s face it: some texts are difficult. You may have no interest in the subject matter, or lack background knowledge or vocabulary necessary for understanding the text, or simply not have a clear sense of why you have to read the text at all. Whatever the reason, reading such texts can be a challenge. Here are some tips for dealing with them:

Look for something familiar. Texts often seem difficult or boring because we don’t know enough about the topic or about the larger conversation surrounding it to read them effectively. By skimming the headings, the abstract or introduction, and the conclusion, you may find something that relates to something you already know or are at least interested in—and being aware of that prior knowledge can help you see how this new material relates to it.

Look for “landmarks.” Reading a challenging academic text the first time through can be like driving to an unfamiliar destination on roads you’ve never traveled: you don’t know where you’re headed, you don’t recognize anything along the way, and you’re not sure how long getting there will take. As you drive the route again, though, you see landmarks along the way that help you know where you’re going. The same goes for reading a difficult text: sometimes you need to get through it once just to get some idea of what it’s about. On the second reading, now that you have “driven the route,” look for the ways that the parts of the text relate to one another, to other texts or course information, or to other knowledge you have.

Monitor your understanding. You may have had the experience of reading a text and suddenly realizing that you have no idea what you just read. Being able to monitor your reading—to sense when you aren’t understanding the text and need to reread, focus your attention, look up unfamiliar terms, take some notes, or take a break—can make you a more efficient and better reader. Keep these questions in mind as you read: What is my purpose for reading this text? Am I understanding it? Does it make sense? Should I slow down, reread, annotate? skim ahead and then come back? pause to reflect?

Be persistent. Research shows that many students respond to difficult texts by assuming they’re “too dumb to get it”—and quitting reading. Successful students, on the other hand, report that if they keep at a text, they will come to understand it. Some of them even see difficult texts as challenges: “I’m going to keep working on this until I make sense of it.” Remember that reading is an active process, and the more you work at it the more successful you will be.

Annotating

Many readers find it helps to annotate as they read: highlighting keywords, phrases, sentences; connecting ideas with lines or symbols; writing comments or questions in the margin or on sticky notes; circling new words so you can look up the definitions later; noting anything that seems noteworthy or questionable. Annotating forces you to read for more than just the surface meaning. Especially when you are going to be writing about or responding to a text, annotating creates a record of things you may want to refer to.

Annotate as if you’re having a conversation with the author, someone you take seriously but whose words you do not accept without question. Put your part of the conversation in the margin, asking questions, talking back: “What’s this mean?” “So what?” “Says who?” “Where’s evidence?” “Yes!” “Whoa!” or even or or texting shorthand like LOL or INTRSTN. If you’re reading a text online, you can use a digital annotation tool like Hypothes.is or Diigo to highlight portions of the text and make notes electronically—and even share your annotations with others.

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What you annotate depends on your PURPOSE, or what you’re most interested in. If you’re analyzing a text that makes an explicit argument, you would probably underline the THESIS STATEMENT and then the REASONS and EVIDENCE that support that statement. It might help to restate those ideas in your own words in the margins—in order to understand them, you need to put them in your own words! If you’re trying to IDENTIFY PATTERNS, you might highlight each pattern in a different color or mark it with a sticky note and write any questions or notes about it in that color. You might annotate a visual text by circling and identifying important parts of the image.

There are some texts that you cannot annotate, like library books. Then you will need to use sticky notes or make notes elsewhere, and you might find it useful to keep a reading log for this purpose.

Coding

You may also find it useful to record your thoughts as you read by using a coding system—for example, using “X” to indicate passages that contradict your assumptions, or “?” for ones that puzzle you. You can make up your own coding system, of course, but you could start with this one*:

 ✓   Confirms what you thought

 X   Contradicts what you thought

 ?  Puzzles you

??  Confuses you

 !  Surprises you

☆  Strikes you as important

 →  Is new or interesting to you

You might also circle new words that you’ll want to look up later and highlight or underline key phrases.

Summarizing

Writing a summary, boiling down a text to its main ideas, can help you understand it. To do so, you need to identify which ideas in the text are crucial to its meaning. Then you put those crucial ideas into your own words, creating a brief version that accurately sums up the text. Here, for example, is a summary of Sandel’s analysis of the Purple Heart debate:

In “What Wounds Deserve the Purple Heart?,” Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel explores the debate over eligibility for the Purple Heart, the medal given to soldiers who die or are wounded in battle. Some argue that soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder should qualify for the medal because psychological injuries are as serious as physical ones. However, the military disagrees, since PTSD injuries are not “intentionally caused by enemy action” and are hard to diagnose. Sandel observes that the dispute centers on how “character” and “sacrifice” are defined. Those who insist that soldiers must have had physical wounds to be eligible for the Purple Heart see psychological wounds as reflecting “weakness of character,” while others argue that veterans with PTSD and other psychological traumas have sacrificed honorably for their country.