Strategies for College Reading Assignments – General Tips
College reading loads can be challenging, but you can manage them.
Part of your strategy should include creating a weekly schedule, allotting time to complete readings to avoid getting behind.
Your goal should be to read any assignment once. Use these strategies to help you stay focused and highlight important information to create a set of notes later.
Once you’ve read these, be sure to read some highlighting tips and explanation of SQ3R, a common reading strategy for increasing engagement and comprehension.
Step 1 – Before you read
Try to get a sense of what you’ll read to help you connect new information you read to things you already know.
Type of Subject
Strategy
Non-fiction readings accompanied by comprehension questions or articles that are broken down into sections with subheadings
Use the SQ3R technique
Literature, Philosophy, critiques, and commentary (when professors don’t provide questions to answer)
Look online for a summary of the plotline (for fiction) or the piece itself (Philosphy critiques, comment), what the piece is about and/or what other writers have said about it (themes, big ideas, why it’s considered important)
Step 2 – While you read
Highlight text as you go
This should help avoid the need to re-read. See highlighting tips.
Adjust your speed
Everyone reads different kinds of material at a different pace, so don’t get frustrated.
You may need to slow down when readings:
- contain a lot of new vocabulary
- introduce concepts that are abstract or unfamiliar
- use a lot of sophisticated language and complex sentence structures
Self-monitor while you read
Stop at the end of a section (or after a few pages if the text isn’t broken up). If you don’t remember or understand what you’ve read, trying reading the next section to see if things become clearer. If they don’t, re-read the challenging section before moving on. Your goal is generally to read something once, but everyone is different, and certain texts may require more work.
If you take notes while you read
If you end up re-reading sections where you’ve taken notes, notetaking is probably affecting your comprehension. You’re better off highlighting while you read and then returning to marked text later to create your notes. (See highlighting tips.)
Step 3 – Create a set of notes when you’re done
Nonfiction
If you’ve used SQ3R to create questions, answer them first. You may decide that those answers can serve as your study guide, and you don’t need to take additional notes.
If you didn’t create or have comprehension questions to answer (or if you answered questions but still want an additional study guide), you’ll make notes from your marked text. It’s okay if you don’t take notes on a lot of what you highlighted. Deciding what’s important (or not) after you read is part of the process.
Categorize and organize the information you highlighted. Create headings under which you’ll copy over the information.
Categories might include:
- important events and the dates on which they occurred
- names of any important people and why they are important
- ideas/theories discussed
- terms and their definitions
- formulas or processes
- any important quotes from experts
Instead of copying over whole sentences, just take the words you need.
Here’s a sample text from the National Park Service about a debate during the Constitutional Convention. If you follow these highlighting tips, it might look like this:
James Madison (VA) proposed a single executive aided by a council, but Edmund Randolph (VA) voiced his concerns over the possibility of an ambitious man abusing his authority. Georgia delegate William Pierce noted that James Wilson (PA) feared the power of many over one, saying “A plurality in the Executive of Government would probably produce a tyranny as bad as the thirty Tyrants of Athens.”
The Convention postponed voting on both the method of selecting an executive and whether one individual or more would comprise the office.
Your notes might look like this:
Person
Colony
Viewpoint/proposal
James Madison
VA
Single executive
Edmund Randolph
VA
Concerned a single person might abuse authority
William Pierce
GA
Noted James Wilson (PA) worried about having more than one person (quote)
- Postponed vote on how to choose executive & whether to have more than one.
- Wilson quote – “A plurality in the Executive of Government would probably produce a tyranny as bad as the thirty Tyrants of Athens.”
Fiction
It’s probably okay if you don’t have a lot of text highlighted or underlined. Themes and ideas are likely to be more important than details.
You might note:
- Characters and their importance to the plotline
- Any quotes from characters that seem important
- Main events in the plot
- Themes
Philosophy
As with fiction, you may not have highlighted a lot. Categories for your notes might include:
- Ideas the author discusses in depth
- Any real-life examples the author uses to illustrate a point
- Any other thinkers the author references (and that person’s ideas)
Criticism
You are reading to find out what the author thinks of other people’s works. Note:
- Artists/authors/thinkers & their works this author discusses
- Themes the author points out in the works discussed
- The author’s view of these works (are they valuable or useful? does the author agree with the other artists’/writers’ message?)
