Getting the main idea in reading is central to effective studying. You must learn what the author’s central idea is and understand it in your own way. Every paragraph contains a main idea. Main ideas are perfect for outlining textbooks. Make it a habit to find the main idea in each paragraph you read.
Extracting Important Details
Extracting important details means that you locate in your reading the main and most significant ideas. There is usually one important detail associated with every main idea. The more important details you can identify, the easier it will be to review for examinations. This is because you have made a link between an idea and information that supports it. The more links you can make between details and ideas, as well as ideas themselves, the more powerful will be the efforts of your study.
The first things to ask yourself are: “Why you are reading the text? Are you reading with a purpose or just for pleasure? What do you want to know after reading it?” In other words, identify your purpose.
Once you know this, you can examine the text to see whether it is going to move you towards this goal. An easy way of doing this is to look at the introduction and the chapter headings. The introduction should let you know whom the book is targeted at, and what it seeks to achieve. Chapter headings will give you an overall view of the structure of the subject.
After grasping ideas from chapter introductions, ask yourself whether the book meets your needs. Ask yourself if it assumes too much or too little knowledge. If the book is not ideal, would it be better to find a better one?
Take 1-2 minutes to skim through the paragraphs to find the core idea. Know what is being expressed. Know what you need. Read lightly and flexibly. Slow down to fulfill your purpose, answering questions that are most important to you. Since very few words carry the meaning, speed up to pass redundant or useless information.
How “So What” Questions Help in Speed Reading
Appreciation is a very simple but powerful technique for extracting the maximum amount of information from a simple fact.
Starting with a fact, ask the question “So what?” – i.e. What are the implications of that fact? Keep on asking that question until all possible inferences have been drawn. Let’s take, for instance, a military example shown below:
* Fact: It rained heavily last night
* So what?
* The ground will be wet
* So what?
* It will turn into mud quickly
* So what?
* If many troops and vehicles pass over the same ground, movement will be progressively slower and more difficult as the ground gets muddier and more difficult.
* So what?
Ask questions for learning. The important things to learn are usually answers to questions. Questions should lead to emphasis on the what, why, how, when, who and where of study content. Ask the questions as you read or study.
As you answer them, you will help to make sense of the material and remember it more easily because the process will make an impression on you. Those things that make impressions are more meaningful, and therefore more easily remembered. Don’t be afraid to write the questions in the margins of textbooks, on lecture notes, or any available spaces. The more these notes are accessible to you, the more you will be able to remember and learn them quickly.
Be an Active Reader
Before you even look at the text, scan it, and read it, ask first the question, “What am I going to learn here? What is the author’s conclusion? How does the author present the topic? What are the key points to the argument?” Such questions function to engage you in the activity. If you ask a question in a lecture, you always remember the answer to the question. Similarly, if you become an “active reader,” you are much more likely to retain the information that you amass.
Answer the Questions at the End of each Chapter
Most academic textbooks that students own contain exercises or quizzes at the end of each chapter to evaluate them on how much they have learned during the whole reading activity. It would be very helpful to answer these questions. If you have come across an item in which you can’t really answer, go back and read.
Think about the text in three ways.
1. Consider the text itself, the basic information right there on the page. (This is the level of most high school readers and many college students).
2. Next, think about what is between the lines, the conclusions, and inferences the author means you to draw from the text.
3. Finally, go beyond thinking about the text. What creative, new, and different thoughts occur as you combine the knowledge and experiences with the ideas in the reading?
Question While You Are Surveying
* Make questions out of the titles, headings, and/or subheadings;
* Read and study questions as each chapter ends;
* Ask the question, “Why did my instructor assign us to read this chapter or section?”
* Ask the question, “How familiar am I about this subject?”
This variation belongs to what we call the SQ3R Method. This method has been a proven way to sharpen study skills.
Stop reading periodically to recall what you have read. Try to recall main headings, important ideas of concepts presented in bold or italicized type, and what graphs charts or illustrations indicate. Try to develop an overall concept of what you have read. Try to connect things you have just read to things you already know. When you do this periodically, the chances are you will remember much more and be able to recall material for papers, essays, and objective tests.
Reading Critically
If you are not satisfied with the basic understanding of a text, this advice sheet will give you some ideas on how to read between the lines. In other words, you will be able to distinguish opinions from facts; and you will be able to form your own judgment on the issues raised in a text. This advice sheet will also give you advice on how to make use of text organization to understand a text.
Recite After Each Section
* Ask the questions about what you have just read, and/or summarize what you read even in your own words.
* While recalling ideas from the text, use your own words in discussing.
* Underline (some even use highlighters or colored markers) important ideas in the text.
* Know what method of recitation best suits your learning style. Remember: you are more likely to recall what you have read when you use more, if not all, of your senses.
What Types of Reading Reflect Flexibility?
Preparation for a very difficult and unfamiliar course or for a new and complex scientific theory may demand that you read to remember everything. Here you are probably reading about 200 to 250 words per minute. You read small groups of words and frequently reread for clarification. You may find yourself mouthing the words. In these situations, you read to remember everything.
Working on a research project may demand that you read a wide range of related literature in search of possible solutions to problems or of new information to support or deny an issue. Many of the ideas in these materials will be familiar to you. In fact, ideas that appeared on one source may also appear on the other. But since you are looking for the new and different, this allows you to race rapidly over the known information and to slow down to analyze the new. Consequently, you need a strategy that allows you to efficiently tackle each document.
Spare time may allow you to relax with a good novel or a favorite magazine. Pleasure reading appears to demand very little of you. But you often carefully skim over the descriptions of the scenery to focus on the action of the main characters. Those who delight in a leisurely perusal of the Sunday morning newspaper often skip articles by noting the headlines and moving on to topics of interest.
What Factors Outside Your Control Influence Your Speed of Reading?
Background knowledge about certain subjects has a powerful influence and helps on your reading speed. If you already know a lot about the topic of the material, you may glance at it and discard it as a waste of time. Alternatively, you may race through the reading, mentally predicting what comes next. You do not reread anything because you feel confident that you understand it. No vaguely recognized words can slow you down.
On the other hand, if you do not know much about the subject, you must read slowly in an attempt to absorb the new ideas and eventually lock them down together with the old information you already know. Occasionally, vocabulary becomes the greater problem. You may have to reach for the dictionary for clarification. You may reread a sentence or a paragraph to figure out what the author is suggesting.
A problem for people who use English as a second language is that they have the knowledge, but they don’t have the equivalent English word translation for what they know. Children who have not been read to before entering school are at a disadvantage when they enter first grade and try to learn to read. They know English, but they don’t know “book talk.” Written English is different from spoken English. Similarly, people who grew up speaking a different dialect or a different language often must slow down as they read to adjust to the sentence structure of standard written English. Here, frequent reading of popular or of professional materials, though boring and uninteresting, strengthens your comprehension of standard written sentence structure.
