Active Reading Overview

Good reading is not simply a matter of taking in information – you need to do more than that. Let's start by looking at what it means to be an active reader.

Reading textbooks can be challenging compared to reading a novel or a website. Students often spend lots of time re-reading without remembering what they just read. If you use active reading strategies, you will understand and remember what you have read more successfully. This section will show you how to be a better student by improving your reading skills for two main benefits:

  • prepare you to be more focused when reading to decrease unnecessary reading time;
  • increase your levels of understanding and ability to focus.


Be an Active Reader

Good reading is not simply a matter of taking in information – you need to do more than that. Think of the reading process as a triangle: the author, the text, and you. They are all connected. You are a key part in the reading process.



 
How can you read more actively? Try these strategies:

  • Predict what you are going to read.
  • Consider what you already know about the topic.
  • Read with a pen in your hand. Mark or underline the main ideas of the text.
  • Mark any sections of the text that are hard to understand or any new vocabulary.
  • Write down any questions you have.
  • Consider your responses to the text: do you agree or disagree?
  • Use symbols (*, !, ?, c) to show your responses to the text.
  • After you read, check that you remember and understand it; one way to do this is to tell someone else about it.

These strategies are known as SQ3R or SQ4R: Survey, Question, Read, (Record), Recite, Review. The tutorial below will show you how you can read better using the SQ4R strategy.



Now that we know what it means to read actively, let's look at some of the strategies we just learned in more detail to see how they are used.

Source:

Intro adapted from Otago Polytechnic,  https://studentservices.op.ac.nz/learning-support/reading-skills/
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Be an Active Reader adapted from Vancouver Community College, https://learningcentre.vcc.ca/media/vcc-library/content-assets/learning-centre/worksheets/study-skills/StudySkills-EffectiveReading.pdf
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Video: OSLIS Secondary Videos,  https://youtu.be/ziofH7N8ZOE?t=8
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.