- Have a clear reading purpose
- Choose what to read
- Preview a text
- Use different ways of reading
- Ask critical questions of the text
- Take notes of your reading
- Connect multiple readings
- Improve your language skills
- Related resources
Reading is one of the most important learning activities at university that you can engage in. Reading gives you access to the knowledge and language of a field and therefore provides a foundation for participating in classes and performing well in assessments.
- Have a clear reading purpose
- Reading to understand a topic
- Reading to address an assessment task
- Choose what to read
If you’re reading to understand a topic, start with core and recommended readings in the subject. These are often comprehensive works in the field that explain the key concepts or issues. You can also search for current research on the topic using the Library website to keep yourself updated on the latest developments. Try using Library Guides for a tailored list of sources for a subject. Another idea is to ask your lecturer for recommendations of texts on a topic. If you have problems understanding key concepts in a subject, you may need to go back to a more basic textbook which explains them at a more fundamental level.
If you are reading to address an assessment task, use the key words from the task to search for relevant sources. Most tasks would ask for some connection to key concepts discussed in the subject, and so it’s important to use core or recommended readings alongside your own research. While theoretical readings can be a bit older, empirical papers, those that report on research findings, are considered recent if their dates of publication fall within the last ten years.
Preview a text
With any text, you will benefit from first previewing its key information to quickly grasp what it is about overall. Try spending around five minutes reading through the title, abstract (if there is one), the introduction and conclusion and any headings or table of contents. For general understanding of a subject, ask yourself:
- What question(s) do I want to answer by reading this text?
- Does this text contain new and useful information on my topic of interest?
- When reading for an assignment, think about how the text is related to the task:
- Can this text help me answer the assignment question in any way?
- If yes, what part of my answer plan does it seem to fit?
Previewing a text helps you to evaluate not only the relevance of a text to your purpose but also its credibility. A text may appear highly relevant to an assignment but may present obvious language problems, biases and inconsistencies. In this case, you may want to forgo engaging with the text if you can, since reading time is precious, and you may have many texts competing for your attention.
Use different ways of reading
You can read different texts, and even different sections of the same text, differently. How you read should depend on what you want to get out of that reading. You can:
Skim a text for the main idea
Scan a text for detail
Read a text closely
Compare different parts of a text
eflect on the text personally and professionally
Ask critical questions of the text
Asking critical questions helps you to read actively and avoid getting carried away by the details of a text because these questions often require synthesis and interpretation of the whole text. For example, you can ask:
- What is the key argument or message of this text?
- What evidence is presented to support this?
- What makes this evidence convincing or not?
- How does this text relate to my own ideas/assignment plan on the topic?
- Take notes of your reading
It’s crucial to take notes while you read, as it gives you a record of ideas that you can use in your assignments and other study activities. If you’ve taken effective notes while reading a text, you usually do not need to re-read it except for quick checks of details. Effective notes go beyond text highlighting and annotation.
Notes should be taken:
In answer to your own questions of the text.
