We’ve all had to slog through pages and pages of long, boring textbooks, so I’ve compiled some tips to help make your readings more efficient and effective!
Break your reading into chunks. Divide the number of pages to read over the number of days you’ve been given to read it. Evaluate the difficulty of the text and your own level of concentration to make sure these chunks are manageable. For example, if your text is light and/or your focus is strong, you may want to read in 4 chunks of 15 pages. But if your text is harder and/or your focus is weaker, you may want to read in 6 chunks of 10 pages.
Schedule your reading time. Determine the exact days in the week (or even the exact hours during the day) you’re going to read, so you’re not tempted to push everything off until the last minute. When scheduling, make a reasonable estimate of how long the reading will take, leave a little wiggle room, and account for taking breaks as well. Additionally, keep in mind restrictions on your schedule, such as sports practices or social gatherings, that may prevent you from reading on certain days. Put the chunks of reading into your planner or timetable under the day or times you’re going to complete them.
If you just flip to the first page of your reading and start taking notes, you’ll have no idea what’s important or what you should be looking for. In order to identify which parts are significant enough to write down, you need to get a big picture of the entire topic. You can get that “thirty-thousand foot view” before reading by doing the following:
skim through headings, pictures, and diagrams
if your textbook has them, read the summaries, practice questions, key words, and/or learning objectives at the end of the chapter
read a brief summary online or watch a video about your topic (Crash Course is great for this!)
Those resources will help you figure out the main points the textbook author wants to get across and your teacher wants you to learn, which will allow you to speed up your note-taking process by not taking notes on unimportant things.
Not all information in a textbook should be treated equally. For maximum reading efficiency, adjust your reading rate depending on the importance of the material. Introductions and filler information might be quickly skimmed, or even skipped, while you should take your time reading and processing difficult/complicated explanations.
You should also adjust your reading rate depending on the relevance of the material, which I explain in further depth here.
Disclaimer: This tip may not work for you if your textbook is concise and doesn’t contain much, if any, filler text. As a high school student, the vast majority of my textbooks are very to-the-point, so I mostly only use this trick for a few supplemental readings. However, I’ve heard that college textbooks tend to be more rambling, so I figured this advice was still worth mentioning!
In my annotating literature post, I recommended using highlighting, underlining, and marking up the text as active reading strategies. However, the same advice does not apply to textbooks. Marking quotes and passages to analyze later is helpful, but for information that you have to memorize and synthesize, studies have shown that highlighting and underlining are among the least effective study strategies.
Taking notes is a much better way to ingrain what you’re reading. Note-taking requires active engagement with the text, so you’ll understand more deeply and memorize it for longer. I also find that the act of summarizing and writing things down helps keep me awake while reading long and boring texts. Use these guidelines when taking notes:
Don’t pause to take notes after every sentence. Read a paragraph or section first before taking notes on the whole thing, to get a bigger picture.
Write everything in your own words as much as possible. This is especially helpful when you have to write an essay or paper, since you can refer directly to your notes without fear of plagiarizing the textbook.
Write in bullet points and fragments instead of full sentences. I also encourage turning information into timelines, cause/effect diagrams, and pro/con tables.
Simplify the language so that a 10-year-old kid could understand it.
Use personal connections, metaphors, and analogies that help you understand topics. These don’t have to make sense to anyone else.
Ideally, your notes should allow you to test yourself for comprehension later on. A popular way to do this is by using the Cornell notes method. I also like to use the headings in my textbook to formulate questions as I go along. For example, if I’m reading and I come to a section with the title “Causes of the Civil War”, I’ll get a sheet of paper (separate from my regular textbook notes) and write “What were the causes of the Civil War?” Later when I’m studying for my test, I can simply go down the list of questions on that paper and answer them to myself, thus making sure that I know all the most important points from the textbook. If I get stuck on any of the questions, I can refer to my regular textbook notes or the book itself.
If you’re reading the textbook to prepare for a lecture on the same topic, I recommend leaving lots of space in your textbook notes to fill in during your lecture. You could either write on every other page (textbook notes on left, lecture notes on right) or skip several lines between each section. That way you don’t have to start your notes from scratch during the lecture– the bulk of the information is already there from the textbook and you just have to add in a few extra details from your professor in class.
(P.S.: Once the school year starts and I begin to take my own textbook and lecture notes, I’ll post pictures of my own notes and explain my personal system in more detail, so stay tuned for that!)
If you’re struggling to focus while reading, try reading the book out loud. This is admittedly more time-consuming, but it will keep you engaged and, if you’re an auditory learner, it might help you understand better.
If your readings are extremely long, stick in some Post-its or page flags with the main ideas of the sections/pages written on them as you read to allow you to quickly find what you’re looking for if you need to refer to the book again.
While reading, note any questions or areas of confusion that need to be clarified either through online research or asking your teacher.
I already told you to use the vocabulary lists and/or the practice questions at the end of the chapters to get a big picture before reading, but remember to go back to these after reading to assess your understanding.
If all else fails, try the gummy-bear-in-a-textbook-method!
Thanks for reading! If you have questions, feedback, or post requests, feel free to drop me an ask.
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