Activities to Build Strategic Reading and/or Study Skills
11 MIN READ
Reading Strategies
Reading Efficiently by Reading Intelligently
We all need to be able to read well, whatever job nosotros practice. Whether we're looking at a project programme, web page, trade periodical, printing release, e-mail, or any other type of text – being able to read it efficiently and effectively is a key professional skill.
Maybe y'all read something that should be useful, simply fail to find anything relevant in it? Do you have to re-read documents several times to empathise them? Or practise you sometimes struggle to remember what you've read?
In this commodity and video, we look at a range of strategies for becoming a better reader. By advisedly matching your approach to your material, and taking command of the reading process, you lot'll learn how to get the best results from the time and endeavor you lot put in – on both page and screen.
Click here to view a transcript of this video.
Reading in Print vs. Reading Online
A 2018 Pew Research Center survey shows that we increasingly read books in a range of formats and on a variety of devices – not just on newspaper. And chances are you lot subscribe to digital newspapers and magazines, or read spider web pages, electronic mail and social media every day.
Nonetheless, the printed medium remains of import, so our reading skills need to exist flexible plenty to cope with digital and physical formats.
Each has its pros and cons, and it's of import to consider them when you're choosing something to read and when you lot're reading information technology.
Here are iv central differences between reading printed and digital texts:
one. Authorisation
It can be harder to judge the quality of online data, peculiarly if the publisher's or author's identity is unclear. Remember, digital texts may take been bailiwick to less editing, checking and reviewing than those in impress. Many of them, though, can really be more accurate, since they're much easier to correct and keep upwards to appointment.
ii. Extras
Printed texts may be accompanied by illustrations, photographs and diagrams, while digital texts can utilize many more "added extras," including audio and video elements, quizzes, and links to other texts. These additions can enrich the reading process, just can as well become distracting, or increment cognitive load.
3. Society
Most printed texts are designed to exist read sequentially. With digital texts, you can navigate as you like, making it easier to discover what you need. However, there's also more risk of missing something important, or of getting sidetracked by irrelevant material.
4. Date
While printed texts tin be underlined or highlighted, many digital ones are fifty-fifty easier to engage with. Past copying and pasting, adding virtual bookmarks, notes, and even sharing comments online, you can handle the information amend. Merely be selective with your annotations to prevent the writer'due south original ideas getting lost.
Tip:
When you're reading on a telephone or some other digital device, use technology to aid enhance the feel.
On an iPhone, for example, the Safari web browser has a "Reader mode." This strips out menus, ads, and other "clutter," making it easier for you to focus on the text.
Several apps, including Aldiko and Wattpad, allow you to highlight key passages, to exit notes as you read, and to share them with other readers.
5 Ways to Read Faster and Read Smarter
Online or in impress, the following five strategies tin aid yous to read more effectively.
1. Know What Yous're Reading – and Why
Before y'all begin, ask yourself three questions:
- What is the purpose of the text? For example, is it to entertain, inform, explain, or persuade?
- How useful is it? Is it relevant, accurate, impartial, current – or not worth reading?
- What are you lot reading information technology for?
Your answers will help you to select what to read, and to choose the most effective reading strategies. In the long run, you'll make amend use of your fourth dimension, and sympathise, remember and apply more of what you read.
So, don't merely dive straight in. Invest a few minutes in preparing to get the about from reading:
- Utilise the cover, championship folio, introduction, and whatsoever other general data, to go an overall sense of the content and approach.
- Dip into the text here and there, to melody in to the author's tone of voice.
- Notice any additional features that might help you to engage with the information.
- Read the Contents, look at how the information is organized, and outset spotting the sections that will probable exist near important for you.
These steps should ensure that you lot're reading something worthwhile, and are set to tackle it in the most productive manner. And you'll take a adept idea nearly how "closely" y'all'll accept to read the text.
2. Identify Key Information
If y'all've decided that you don't need to read something in particular, detect the quickest means to excerpt the basics. Use chapter headings, abstracts and summaries. Await for illustrations and graphics. And focus on "user-friendly" features like fact boxes, bullet points, and FAQs.
It helps to know where to await for the key information. And so spotting particular structures in writing can help your reading be even more than efficient.
For example, a news article unremarkably summarizes a story in the first few lines, then adds layers of detail, which y'all may decide you can "skim read."
In an opinion commodity, the important information is likely contained in the introduction and the summary, with supporting arguments in between. When you've read the start and end, you tin decide how much of the middle you need to explore.
A characteristic article tends to accept its almost important information in the main torso of the text, and then you lot may decide it'due south all-time to starting time there.
Our commodity on Speed Reading has further help and advice for when a fairly low level of detail is needed, and time is tight!
Tip:
When you're reading digital texts, you lot tin can utilise the search tools in your browser or text editor to detect central words or phrases.
There are also many apps to speed upwards your reading. Spreeder lets you prepare your preferred screen size, paste in text, and control the speed at which it'southward displayed. Spritzlet shows web pages ane word at a time, claiming reading speeds of up to 1,000 words per minute are possible. BeeLine Reader uses graded colors to describe your eyes from line to line, to make reading experience easier and faster.
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3. Increase Your Agreement
When you lot need more than just a basic understanding, go along using introductions and summaries, but explore them in more detail.
You lot can still "speed read" chapters, but spend plenty time on the key words and concepts and make sure that you haven't disregarded any important points.
Pay attention to diagrams, charts and graphs, equally they are often used to explicate circuitous ideas within the text.
And make unproblematic annotations, or highlight important words and phrases, to ensure that you're reading to the level of detail required.
Tip:
Many online articles and electronic documents were not originally designed to be read on a screen. If you find something hard to use that way, consider printing information technology. A study into on-screen reading showed longer texts are easier to grasp in print than online.
4. Recollect and Review the Text
When "deep reading" is required, maybe to teach, or to remember for an examination, SQ3R is a powerful technique.
Its step-by-step approach involves surveying the cloth, using key questions to guide you, so thoroughly reading, recalling and reviewing the text. Information technology checks that you really understand what you're reading, and increases your chances of remembering it.
You'll besides do good from making more detailed notes equally y'all read. Practice "active reading," by highlighting and underlining equally yous go, and by recording fundamental data. Also, you can utilize Heed Maps to boost your understanding and powers of recall.
Try putting the ideas you read into your ain words, too, by writing them up. Our article, Paraphrasing and Summarizing, explores several techniques to assist y'all to brand sense of and remember the texts y'all read.
And talking to others can too make reading even more productive. So share your questions, comments and follow-on ideas.
Tip:
If you lot're reading large amounts of difficult, technical textile, try using a glossary. Or, even better, compile one of your own! Keep this beside yous as yous read, and add to information technology as your knowledge of the terminology grows.
5. Control Your Reading Environment
To give yourself the best chance of reading finer, always think about where and when to practice it.
For example, in bed, before long before going to sleep, reading for pleasure might be a good way to relax your heed. But it's likely not the best time or place for in-depth study!
Then, schedule hard reading tasks when your encephalon is at its all-time. Is This a Morning time Chore? will help you to work out when this is.
And ensure that your reading environs is comfortable merely not too comfy! Find somewhere repose, free from distractions, and where the seating, temperature and lighting all help you to focus.
Tip:
For more detailed information on how to select the near appropriate reading strategies in any given state of affairs, take our Bite-Sized Training session Read Smarter.
Key Points
Flexible reading skills are vital to cope with a wide range of cloth, in a variety of formats.
We demand to adjust our reading behavior for printed and digital texts accordingly – including using technology to assistance.
Reading strategies should exist based on the type of text you're using, and what you desire from it.
- Know what you're reading - and why.
- Place primal data.
- Increase your understanding.
- Remember and review the text.
- Command your reading surroundings.
Source: https://www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.html
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