How to Read a Book

For many students, learning to use books correctly can be a profound experience. It is important at the outset to stop and ask yourself, "how do I learn?"  It is possible to improve how you learn and therefore, improve your grades.  The following are a series of suggestions for helping you to use books and your time most efficiently.  By utilizing these suggestions, you will not only learn how to improve your study habits in this course, but in all your other courses as well.

Textbooks are your reference to various subject matter and software programs. It should be the basis of your learning. They are usually an organized presentation of the entire course.

A textbook can be seen as dry and boring. It is a confusing mass of information for those students who don't know how to use it properly. There are seven steps to effectively using a textbook. Each step has an important purpose - a valuable role to play in the overall learning process. As you begin to apply this learning method, be careful to follow all of the suggestions for each step as given below.

 

STEP 1: - PREVIEW This step and the next step (ASK) are critical to the effective learning of new information. Unfortunately, they are also the steps most often overlooked. To learn new material efficiently, it is important to have a context to put it in. To simply sit down and jump into reading a chapter in a textbook without any preparation, is a little like skydiving from an airplane without a parachute. You need a parachute to brake and control your fall through the air; you need some clues or ideas about what you are reading to keep you from 'falling' through the sea of information included. The PREVIEW and ASK steps will create your parachute.

To PREVIEW means to skim quickly (3-5 minutes) through the pages of your reading assignment. Begin by reading and making a brief mental (not written) note of the titles. Similarly, glance through each page of the text, taking notice of whatever catches your attention. Bold-print headings and subheadings, words in italics-or quotes, names, illustrations, graphs, pictures - all these have the potential for catching your eye. Look for summary statements. Many texts have the summary in the introduction or at the end of each chapter.

Some things will attract your attention and some won't - don't be concerned. You will have enough ideas to create your parachute. Sometimes just reading the first line of various paragraphs, or reading the list of key words sometimes found at the end of the chapter can yield pieces for your parachute. Pay attention to the order of headings and subheadings - they tell you which topics are subordinate to other topics. After previewing the text, move on to step 2.

 

STEP 2: - ASK To ASK means to convert some (not all) of the words, headings, names, pictures, etc. that you have just noticed in the last step, into questions you ask yourself. Close the book, shut your eyes, and relax a minute. Imagine that you have the author in the room with you right now. What questions would you ask him or her? How can he or she help you through this course? Write down your questions.

What words, pictures, graphs, names, etc. from the text, pop back into your mind? Now, form some of those associations into questions and write several questions down on paper. You can also turn chapter headings and subheadings into questions by asking for example, "what is meant by wordprocessing?" Ask "what," "why," and "how" questions because they demand answers that force more in-depth thinking. They will require you to begin processing the ideas and facts contained in the reading assignment in terms of relationships between and among those ideas or facts.

It is important that you write down these questions. Make the questions playful or creative; this should be a fun part of your reading program. You do not need to answer every single question, although you should consider each one seriously. The point of makinup questions is to stimulate your interest and mental activity.

At this point you have developed a vague, but exceedingly important context for what you will read. This context gives you a place to actively seek and process information. Beginning to read with "nothing in mind" quickly leads your brain into lethargy. NO QUESTIONS YIELD NO ANSWERS!

 

STEP 3: - READ Now that your parachute is prepared (and it only took a few minutes), you are ready to read and learn something at the same time. Read to answer the questions you have just created. Move through your assignment, consciously and actively using the context (parachute of questions) you developed to process the material contained in the reading.

Don't feel obligated to stick with just your original questions. Periodically think of new questions (how, what, and why) as you read. In most texts, you will have been supplied with some questions at the end of the chapters. Use those as well as your own questions. Try to keep challenging yourself to make sure you recognize and fit together the pieces of what you read.

One of the most NONPRODUCTIVE study habits the average person uses is reading and underlining (with a pen, pencil, or hi-liter) at the same time. Typically, this habit results in at least one-third of the material being underlined and very little real thinking going on. Underlining at this point in the reading process is premature so DO NOT UNDERLINE ANYTHING AT THIS POINT!

First you must organize the material you are reading. Write down some basic ideas which could help answer your questions. Write in the margins of your text. Write summary statements and continue to ask new questions. Don't be afraid to write questions in your text.

 

STEP 4: - TALK - Most people finish their reading assignment, breathe a sigh of relief, and toss the book on the desk. They are done, or at least think they are. At this point it is extremely important to find out how much you know'.  This can be done by reciting the things you remember from your reading. You can also look at some of your marginal notes to stimulate your thinking and talking. This "talking" (it doesn't have to be out loud) will do two things:

First, the repetition of ideas helps to fix the new material in your mind. Second, as you talk, all of the clearly understood and remembered information will come out first. Then you will find yourself becoming more and more vague and incomplete in your recitation. This allows you to recognize, in a very conscience way, what you really know about the material and what is still left to be learned. Don't let the exam time be this first recital of unknown and not understood information.

 

STEP 5: - EDIT To edit means to refine; in this case you want to refine your understanding of the text you have just read. You can do this by going back to your marginal notes and analyzing them thoroughly. Now, instead of guessing at what seems to be important information, you can make reasonable choices among the ideas. You can decide, based on the entire reading assignment, what are very important ideas, supporting ideas, and what are good examples of each.

Now you can underline or hi-lite your text. Only now do you have the ability to chose the really important topics and sentences. Be careful not to hi-lite too much. Hi-liting less than 10 percent allows more effective review of most material.

 

STEP 6: - EXPERIMENT This is perhaps the most critical step for learning from text dealing with software packages. Up to now you have become familiar with what the computer will do based on the concepts and procedures presented in the textbook. You know the essential commands and you have a general understanding of what they will do for you.

Now, however, you must actually use the commands and procedures on a computer. Make this part fun. First go through the step by step procedures that are presented in the book. Perform the exercises using the information provided until you understand how each command works and why it is important. Now go back and use the same commands to perform a task that you are interested in. Try to use all the commands that you have learned up to this point. Use your imagination to think up personal applications that will not only provide you with useful end products, but will also help you to remember all of the options available in the software packages.

You can never get too much practice. The more you can put into practice, the easier it will be to remember the important commands and concepts.

 

STEP 7: - REVIEW Another important step is to review within 24 hours of reading the material. This review can save you hours of review time later on.

During this process, look over your notes and clear up anything you don't understand. Describe out loud the important points again. In a sense, you will be learning some of the material over again during the review. Don't get discouraged by how much you think you forgot from the previous day. What has happened is that you learned the material at one level of consciousness but not at the deeper, longer lasting level. This review will place that material at a deeper level, not to be forgotten by exam time. This review wears a deeper path in your memory banks.

The review need not be time consuming. You might spend as little as 15 minutes reviewing a two-hour assignment. This short review will save you hours when you study for the exam.

 

IN THE COMPUTER LAB

Always come to the lab prepared. Have your assignment ready. Work it out on paper if necessary before going to the computer lab. The computer lab is not a study center! Your studying should be finished by the time you sit down at the computer. You should be ready to practice the lessons you have learned in your reading and experiment only with similar projects.