Reading skills for college

1. How to Read
in College

2. Tools needed

3. How to read in order to learn:
I. Pre-read
II. Read
III. Review

4. I. Pre-read
Preview > Predict > Skim

5. Preview
◦Chapter title
◦Article title
◦Pictures
◦Charts
◦Captions
◦Subheadings
◦Length

6. Make guesses about…
• The topic
• The main idea
• The details
• The tone
• The purpose
• The audience
• The author’s opinion
Predict
“Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension”
NELL K. DUKE and P. DAVID PEARSON
The Journal of Education
Vol. 189, No. 1/2, THEORY, RESEARCH, REFLECTION on
TEACHING and LEARNING (2008/2009), pp. 107-122
Published by: Trustees of Boston University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42748663

7. Skim
Stay on the surface; get a general idea. Who wrote it? What’s it about?
Where was it published? What year?
LOOK AT…
• First sentence
• Last sentence
• Bold words
• Names of people and places
• Dates
• Repeated words

8. II. Read – Like a BOSS
Scan > Read actively > Skim

9. Like a BOSS?

10. Yeah, like a BOSS.

11. Scan
• Look for specific information,
such as answers to quiz questions
and homework assignments.
• Look for key words

12. Read & take notes
• Take notes in the margin or on paper.
• Summarize the main point of each paragraph or section;
write it as a short phrase or sentence.
• Ask questions: who, what, where, why, when, how?
• Identify new concepts or words.
Watch this video to see a great way to take notes. It’s called the
“Cornell method.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtW9IyE04OQ

14. Were your
guesses
correct?
Check your predictions
• Compare the content to your predictions.

15. Pull out main ideas
Main idea

16. Figure out the meaning of new words
Do your best to get an idea of the meaning from how the word is used in the reading. Example:
Can you guess the meaning of the nonsense word in the sentence below?
“I poured myself a glass of cold bluffinog. Then I drank the whole thing.”*
If a word is still confusing, mark it and move on. After you finish the paragraph, follow these steps:
1. Look it up in an English dictionary.
2. Look up example sentences in a corpus such as the COCA or Google
news.
3. Find translations that would work in those example sentences.
* From the sentence, it is clear that “bluffinog” is a noun that refers to some kind of drinkable liquid.

17. III. Review
Go over notes > Summarize > Analyze

18. Go over your notes

19. Summarize
• After you read, look at the main points you wrote down for each
paragraph or section.
• Then summarize the entire reading in a couple sentences.
If you can’t explain it simply,
you probably don’t understand it! In brief, be brief.

20. Analyze
What else does this topic relate to?
Is the passage well written?
What did the author do well?
Does it have any weaknesses?
Are all of the examples strong?
What information is missing (if any)?
Ask questions. Be critical. Figure out how this reading fits into the broader body of writing on the topic.

21. How to read:
1. Pre-read
2. Read (like a BOSS)
3. Review

22. THE END