Do you think reading is important for getting a job? Critical, I would say, given that any job will be based on how well you can read and apply new information. How to Improve Your Reading Skills becomes essential in this context. On the other hand, a study states that the time an average college student spends reading is less than 2 hours in a week.1 Interesting correlation, isn’t it?
In college, you are expected to critically read textbooks and research papers and understand their relevance. Critical reading is a process that goes beyond just understanding the words in the text. You have to employ strategies which include inferring the authors’ ideas, ranking ideas mentioned in the text in order of importance, and figuring out what are the questions being asked or answered by the author.
If you are looking to be a more active reader, it would be interesting to check out a method called PQRST – Preview, Question, Read, Summarize, and Test. How to Improve Your Reading Skills effectively can start with this method, as it has proven successful in improving a reader’s comprehension of a text as well as their ability to use the information effectively.
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Preview
The first step is skimming through the text to understand the gist of what you are reading. How do you do that? First, familiarize yourself with the material by checking out how the content is divided, what the major topics are, and what concepts have been covered in greater detail. Then get into details such as table of contents, summaries, headings and sub-headings etc.
Question
The next step is to use this information by turning the headings/subheadings into questions. Start with questions like ‘What do I already know about this topic?’ or ‘What question is this chapter trying to answer?’. Scholars say it is helpful to use the following words – Who, What, When, Where, Why, How – to create these questions.
Read
After generating a few questions, read the text looking for answers to these questions. It is recommended to try and read the section of text that applies to the heading/question you are working on. If you find any section to be particularly difficult, break larger chunks down into smaller sub-sections.
As a general rule, each paragraph is about one key idea, and mostly this key idea is found in the first sentence of the paragraph. The second point of importance is to note bold and underlined words or phrases as they have been highlighted for a reason.
Summarize
Post the reading exercise, begin by creating a skeleton outline based on your initial questions, then filling it by adding the main ideas and key phrases you have noted. For example, if there is a list or process, it might be interesting to create a visual that shows a list or the steps to that process.
Test
In this method, testing functions more as a review. You can use a variety of methods to test yourself. One could be to write a summary of the complete chapter. Another is to teach somebody the same concepts by going through the headings, explaining the main ideas. You can also create a presentation to demonstrate key concepts for your classmates.
The PQRST method is meant to help you hone the ability to acquire and assimilate new and complex information in a more efficient way. How to Improve Your Reading Skills lies in understanding that reading is a two-way communication between the author and the reader, and it is important to interpret and make connections between prior knowledge and what you read.
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