University of Idaho: College Success Strategies

2. Embrace Reading
How does it help?
• Acquire knowledge
• Develop an understanding of the material
• Introduced to new ideas and terms
• Gain more exposure to class material
• Get ideas for major assignments and projects
• Critically think and process information

3. Find and Understand the purpose
• Reading due before class
• Introduce ideas, concepts, and formulas
• Ground the lectures
• Gain the basics of the class lecture
• Reading due after class
• Clarify concepts and look for connections to lecture material
• Reinforce class time

4. Think about critical reading as improving
before reading, during reading, and after
reading

5. Before Reading
Preview the material and prepare questions
• The preface or introduction, will help you understand what the text is
about
• Develop questions about the material
• General or specific
• These can come from lecture

6. Read with focus
Engage with the text
• Mark up key aspects of the text
• Definitions, examples, connections
• Highlight and underline things that stick out
• Formulas, definitions, main ideas
• Key concepts
• Take notes while reading
• Works well with especially dense material

7. Read with focus
Clarify confusing material
• Carefully reread any material you find confusing
• Write questions
• Look up definitions
• Glossaries
• Footnotes
• Ask a classmate or instructor for help
• Build a foundation of knowledge

8. After Reading
Revisit the material
• Write your own summaries
• Create questions and try to answer them
• Reread important sections
• Look for where emphasis is placed
• Identify bold or italicized words
• Rewrite your margin notes into a notebook

9. After Reading
Discuss the material
• Connect with professor or TA
• Look for common questions and points of confusion
• Summarize the material to someone unfamiliar with the text
• Turn to your peers for added clarification
• Utilize Drop-In tutoring or SI-PASS
• Both of these services are available online

10. After Reading
Reread with supplemental sources
• Review sections that are confusing
• Search YouTube
• May contain summaries or explanations of the text you need to
read
• Look for supplemental readings to help clarify

11. Key Takeaways
• Understand what the purpose of the reading – Prefacing or giving
more detail?
• Mark up the text – engage with the text in a meaningful way
• Writing four sentence summaries of readings is an easy way to get
more out of your reading
• Don’t understand something? – Seek out help!