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Summarizing can be more effective than highlighting or annotating because it helps you better gauge what you do and don’t understand about a reading. Stop after every paragraph or page and write a brief summary of the main concepts in your own words. Form questions while you read and try to answer them later. Turn headings into questions and then answer them as you read. This is a quick and engaging way to take notes.Īsk and answer questions. Take brief notes in your own words about the main concepts and key words in the margins of your text. Keep that purpose in mind while you read, and check to see if you have reached it by the end.Īnnotate. (Think about what you need to be able to know or do after reading). Set a purpose for reading before you start. Use this information to form an idea of what the chapter is going to focus on. Before starting to read, look through the chapter and note text features like headings, bold words, charts, graphs, images, and end of chapter questions. But read ahead to find out how you can do more to engage while reading and studying.Įffective strategies to use when reading are ones that engage your brain in deep thinking about the text. If that’s you, great-don’t stop if it works for you. Some students like highlighting or underlining because it helps them do something with their hands and become more engaged with the text. Effective reading strategiesĪs the paragraph above explains, highlighting isn’t 100% bad in and of itself, depending on what students highlight and how they use that content later. And even if we remember or even understand these highlighted nuggets, there’s no indication that we’re seeing the bigger picture and are able to apply, analyze, or evaluate the material-the types of higher order thinking that professors usually invoke in their exam questions. Many of us confuse this familiarity with a good understanding of the material.
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Why? After looking at content that’s phrased a particular way and presented on the same part of a page a couple of times, that content can pretty quickly become familiar to a reader. Rereading in this way can contribute to illusions of competence-the feeling that we know more than we actually know.
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In addition, many students who highlight while reading then use these highlighted sections of the text as the main substance of their studying, rereading this content as their primary study strategy. Focusing on which details to highlight can get in the way of a deeper understanding of the big picture. The problem is that instead of thinking critically about the content, they primarily spend their mental energy sorting the content into what’s important and what’s not. Why do students highlight? Usually students highlight because they want to focus on the important parts of the text and highlight-literally and figuratively-those parts for later study. This handout shares effective reading strategies that you can use instead of or in addition to highlighting and shares tips for highlighting well. However, despite its popularity, highlighting tends not to be a very effective reading strategy. Many college students use highlighting as a reading tool.