#11 Tuesday Quick Tips: "How to Read a College Textbook"

This podcast explains effective, active steps any person can do to read and learn the information in a college textbook in an easy straightforward process using SQ4R: S for survey Q for question R for read, recite, review, and reflect.

Transcript

Mickie Hayes  0:00 
It's true confession day. When I first started college, I had a rude awakening about how to read a textbook. I did fairly well in high school. But I learned very quickly in college that you can't use the same techniques that you learned in high school. In high school, I could get away without reading a book pretty easily. I hate to say it, but I kind of knew how to shortcut the system and avoid myself a little extra work, which I'm sure many of your children already know how to do. If you're not a reader instinctively, and kids with dyslexia generally are not readers because it's such a struggle to do that, they tend to figure out the shortcuts. And that works pretty well in high school, not so much a college. My goal today is to help anybody who has to read a college textbook, learn how to do it easily, rather effectively, and make it an experience that they can actually gain knowledge from so they can perform well on their evaluations in class. Welcome to Episode 11. "How to Read a College Textbook"  by Mickie Hayes.

Unknown Speaker  1:00 
The process I'm going to talk about today is something called SQ4R: S for survey Q for question R for read, recite, review, and reflect. Now let's take a closer look at that system and take each one of those steps apart. Your first step when you're reading a chapter in your textbook is to do a survey. Now the survey, in my opinion is probably one of the most important parts in this process. And it's actually one of the easiest. So the first thing you do is you skim through the pages one page at a time, and you look at anything that is in bold print, read the headings, take a look at the pictures and read the captions underneath the pictures, move through the chapter one page at a time until you get to the end of the chapter, and then look at the summary, the review questions, and any list of terminology that's found inside the chapter. Read the summary, check out those questions and see if you know any of them already, and make a note on a paper of any terms that you don't know and need to learn. The whole purpose of starting with a survey is to get a holistic feel for the chapter, get a general overall picture of what that chapter is about and what the important things are in the chapter. That would be the things that are in bold, print the headings, those are the key points that they want to make sure you notice and understand. And then as you're doing that overview, as you're doing that survey, keep a pencil and paper next to you and just jot down any of the things that grab your attention and make you go... "Hmm, okay, I need to figure that out." And make a note of anything that stands out to you when you do that survey. You also take a look and figure out if there's information you might already know in that chapter. If you're lucky, all that makes life ever so much easier. But you want to check and see if there's anything you already know. And you get a holistic feel for how much time you're going to have to dedicate to learning what's in that chapter. Step two is the Q question who, what, when, where, why. Whenever you think of a question, jot it down. So who who has mentioned in this chapter, who's important to know in this chapter? What's going on in this chapter? When? What time frame? Are things happening in this chapter? Are things taking place in this chapter? And why? Why is the author even telling you about this? Now as you're thinking of questions that you don't know the answers to jot them down on that piece of paper, so you have a reference paper of questions to go back to and check on when you're finished. You  can go into this Q section, this question section as deep as you want to, or as lightweight as you want to. It depends on the nature of the chapter, how much you feel you already know, and how much of that information you've never ever seen before. The third step is read. This is the time where you read the content in the chapter. If you are a struggling reader, use a screen reader or some sort of app that will read the content to you. If you are reading the chapter to yourself, I suggest you read it aloud so that you focus on the words and hear the information in the chapter. You should also read with a pencil and paper next to so that as you're reading, anything that catches your fancy, you can jot down on that paper that you can look at later. You can also read with a highlighter in your hand. But if you use a highlighter on your text, only use it sparingly a word here a word there so that when you look at the page, those words will pop out at you. If you just use a highlighter and make pretty little stripes in your book, all you're doing is making pretty little stripes and they're not very effective. So just a dot here in there to draw your eyes attention to a key word or phrase. If you listen to my podcasts on learning styles that when you're reading a chapter you're reading with your eyes, you're using the visual but if you read it out loud, you're also using the auditory and then if you are jotting things down on a piece of paper next to you, you're using the tactile kinesthetic preferences. And we learn best when we use all of the learning preferences. The next step in the reading process is recite, in my opinion, you have to recite your information out loud, that is the most effective way for you to commit to your memory. What I have found is students who study quietly struggle more than the individuals who actually study out loud. You become your own teacher, you literally are teaching it to yourself by saying it out loud. And that is what you will grab onto, that will help you remember the information for the test. I compared it to smoke when I would teach this to the students, you can see smoke, you can smell it, but you can't touch it. You can't grab it. That's like getting an idea quietly in your brain, you know, you learned it, you know, you read it, you know you studied it, but it's smoke, you just can't grab onto it. Reading aloud and reciting is very important in helping you commit the information to memory. Your next step is to review. This is the time where you want to consider what you remember, what you didn't catch, what you still don't understand. Take a look at the notes you've made. Scan the pages for any highlighting that you might have done or any notes that you put into the textbook, anything that's going to trigger that memory in your brain. Review, review, review, but figure out what you still need to learn what has not yet stuck in your brain. And then the final step reflect. This is where you take a moment and look back over everything again, and think about if there's anything in particular that just didn't click that just made no sense that you still have more questions than answers. Those are the conversations then that you should take to your teacher during office hours so that you can figure out what information you're missing from that chapter. So through this whole process, you did survey, question, read, recite, review, and reflect. And if you did each one of these steps, by the time you're finished reading that chapter, you should have a pretty good handle on what is important and what you know in that chapter and what you still need to study. I hope you found this section valuable today. I think it's very important that students coming into college spend some time actually digesting the information in the textbook if that is what the professor is expecting. If you have any questions please, please be sure to email me at Mickieteaches@gmail.com M i c k i e teaches@gmail.com Thanks for joining me today. Bye. The information contained throughout this podcast has been gleaned from my own personal experiences, but to ensure accuracy please contact the Disability Services at the College of your choice to have first hand information and the most up to date policies and procedures followed for your particular institution of higher education. The content in any of these podcasts is not intended as a substitute for information from legal, educational or medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your attorney or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have with regards to legal educational or medical concerns.

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