Reading Strategies

Some courses will have you reading a textbook or website. You will not be doing this in English,as all of your texts are provided within the course material.  However, it is helpful to know some strategies that will assist your understanding of textual information in other courses.

 Most informational texts use a variety of visual, graphic and text features to organize information, highlight important ideas, illustrate key concepts, and provide additional information. Features may include headings, subheadings, table of contents, index, glossary, preface, paragraphs
separated by spacing, bulleted lists, sidebars, footnotes, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, graphs, captions, italicized words or passages, boldface words or sections, colour, and symbols.

When you first receive these types of texts, preview the table of contents. This will help you become familiar with the content.

Prior to reading the pages:

• scan the headings; you will know what information the text will provide.
• look for bolded words; if you do not already know the meaning of these words, you will have to find them. Often bolded words are defined in the margins or at the back of your text.
• look for italicized words; often phrases are italicized for emphasis - these phrases will likely appear on a test! Sometimes the italicized words are a title of a major work - these are not as important to remember.
• look for titles and captions on tables, diagrams and illustrations; the supplimentary information will assist you in understanding the content
• look for highlighted or coloured text and illustrations; often this material is offered as a support to the content on the page
• pay attention to other features such as: headings, subheadings, prefaces, paragraphs separated by spacing, bulleted lists, sidebars and footnotes. All of these features are used by text creators to draw attention to important material.
• pay attention to introductory and concluding paragraphs; they often summarize the content of the section or chapter
• scan the resources (index, glossary, etc.) at the back of the text; understand you can use these resources to find and understand content

Prepare to read using the SQ4R strategy (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review, Reflect). In this strategy, you would:

• survey the title, headings, subheadings, maps, pictures, sidebars, bold or italic print, etc.
• Turn the title, headings, and captions into questions.
• Read the passage to answer questions.
• Recite the answers to their questions to summarize the passage.
• Review the passage toremember the main idea and important information and details.
• Reflect on the passage and process to check for understanding of the text, and to generate additional questions.