Active Reading Strategies

At university, you are expected to read a wide range of texts that include course books,
academic reference books, lecture slides, journal articles,
newspapers, organisational websites, case studies, research
reports, etc. You may have several purposes for reading such
texts, for instance, to prepare for classes and tutorials, to review
information addressed in classes and tutorials, conduct research
for assignments, or revise for exams. The reading demands of
university study may seem overwhelming, but can efficiently be
dealt with by developing effective reading skills.

What challenges do students face in reading academic texts?

University students often find it difficult to read academic texts effectively. The challenges they
commonly face are:

●​ Finding texts suitable for their purpose

●​ Reading texts in an efficient way
●​ Losing track of ideas when reading
●​ Taking a long time to read
●​ Locating main ideas and relevant information
●​ Connecting with information from previously read texts
How to deal with these challenges?

To tackle these challenges, you need to apply some effective reading strategies. It is important
to note that reading is an active process that requires you to engage with a text in three stages:
the pre-reading stage, the while reading stage, and the post-reading stage. At each stage,
you need to do some activities so that you can read a text effectively and use the information to
suit your purpose.
 Figure 1: The three stages of Reading

The Pre-reading Stage

Before you read a text in detail, you need to ask yourself a few questions to prepare for the
reading task. You may ask yourself the following questions, among many:

1.​ What is the title and writer’s name of this book or text? How much do I know about this
text or topic or the writer?
2.​ What is the genre or structure of this book or text?
3.​ Does the book or text have any pictures, illustrations, headings etc.? What is my guess
regarding the content of the book or text, based on these pictures, illustrations,
headings?
4.​ What is my purpose for reading this book or text? Do I want to read the text for general
understanding of the text? Do I need any specific information from this text?

Asking yourself these questions will help you predict what you may read in the text and thus
increase your involvement with the text, and eventually influence how much information you will
understand and remember from it. Additionally, based on your purpose for reading, you can
practise the two quick reading strategies below:

A. Skimming

B. Scanning

A.​ What is skimming?

Skimming refers to quickly viewing a text to get an overall idea of the author’s main argument,
themes or ideas. Skimming is a speed reading strategy that you use to read more in less time,

When you skim, you read only a few selected parts of the text quickly in order to find answers
to the following two questions:

a.​ What is the text about? (i.e. What is the writer’s message/overall main idea/ central
idea in this text?)

b.​ How has the writer organised this text? (i.e. What is the writer saying in each section
or body paragraph?)
Additionally, skimming skill leads to a better understanding of reading texts as it involves utilising
your background knowledge (what a reader already knows about a topic) and the writers’
organisation of ideas in academic texts.

How to skim through a text?

Skimming is quick because at this stage you read only a few parts of the text, instead of reading
the whole. For skimming, you only do the following:

1.​ Read the title of the text. It will help you predict the content.
2.​ Look at illustrations (such as pictures, diagrams, tables, etc.).
3.​ Notice sub-headings and bold words (if any) in a text
4.​ Read the introduction and the conclusion.
5.​ Read the topic sentence and the concluding sentence of each body paragraph.

Skimming strategy works best with academic texts because those texts have a clear, predictable
structure. If you know that structure, you can quickly decide which section of the text you want
to read and then form the central idea of that text easily.

What is a top-down view of academic texts?

Academic articles or book chapters typically contain an introduction, several paragraphs, and a
conclusion. Paragraphs may also be grouped into sections.

Here is what academic texts look like:

Figure: The traditional

structure of academic texts

Knowing this structure will help you quickly locate

the necessary paragraphs or sentences in the text
that you want to skim read.

When to skim?
You can decide whether or not to skim by asking yourself the following questions. If your answer
is yes to any of these, then skimming is a useful tool.

●​ Does this text follow the structure of a typical academic text as illustrated above?
●​ Do I have a lot of reading to do and only a small amount of time?
●​ Do I need a general idea or the central idea of the text?

B. What is scanning?
Scanning is another useful tool for speeding up your reading. Unlike skimming, when scanning,
you look only for a specific fact or piece of information without reading everything. For instance,
you apply the scanning strategy when you look for your name in the attendance record, for
exam dates on the notice board, the sports scores in the newspaper, or your favourite dish on
the restaurant menu, etc.

Scanning means letting your eyes move quickly through the text until you find what you are
looking for. Skimming will help you understand how the text is organised, and using this
understanding, you can quickly scan only a particular section or paragraph of the text to locate
the specific information you need.

How to scan a text?

1.​ Know what you are looking for. Decide on a few keywords or phrases for the
information you are looking for.
2.​ Let your eyes float rapidly down the paragraph or page until you find the word or
phrase you want.
3.​ When your eye catches one keyword, read the surrounding sentences carefully.
4.​ Look for only one keyword at a time. If you use multiple keywords, do multiple scans.

5.​ Run your finger down the middle of the page or backward and forward to focus
your attention and keep track of your scan.

In your academic studies, you probably skim and scan texts without knowing you are doing it.
Hopefully, knowing about these two reading strategies in detail now, you will be able to use
skimming and scanning more intentionally and frequently. The more you practice skimming and
scanning, the more quickly you will be able to understand the text structure and form the central
idea, and locate your specific information. So, keep practising!

While Reading Strategy: Annotation

At the pre-reading stage, skimming helps you develop an understanding of the central idea and
the structure of a text. Using this knowledge of the text, you may decide to read it for detailed
comprehension, which is the “while reading” stage.

As you start reading a text, you may face a few of the following challenges:

●​ Understanding what the author is trying to say

●​ Staying focused on the writer’s ideas in a text
●​ Recalling what the text about without rereading
●​ Using the author’s ideas in writing assignment with a citation when needed
●​ Revising for an examination

To address these challenges, you can practise one effective strategy while reading a text: take a
pen and start marking the text using some convenient symbols and writing short notes on the
margin. This note-taking strategy, called ANNOTATION, can significantly improve your
concentration and understanding of a text.

What is Annotation?
Annotation refers to the act of writing while reading. It means to add notes to a text as you read.
By using annotation strategy, you create a systematic summary of the text within the document.
You can watch a related video on annotation on buX.

Annotation is an effective strategy for active reading. You can annotate a text by marking it with
symbols and writing your understanding of the main ideas in the margin. By reading a passage
from a text carefully, pausing for a while to reflect upon the concept, and then marking and
adding notes on main ideas to that passage as you read, you can significantly improve your
understanding of it.

Annotation involves you (the reader) in doing the following:

1.​ Using symbols to mark the text such as underlining important information and
circling new words or key terms
2.​ Writing margin notes

How does annotation benefit students?

Annotation can have several advantages for you, such as the following:

1.​ This process of marking texts (articles, essays, books, etc.) can help you to concentrate,
to understand the text quickly, and to remember more information.
2.​ Annotation can help you identify key points in texts and write your own understanding of
them.
3.​ Annotation also helps you monitor how much of the text you could understand
successfully.
4.​ Since these margin notes express the main ideas and major supporting details of a text,
they act as a reading guide for your post-reading tasks, such as for expressing your
opinion, creating a presentation, summarising the text, etc.

How can we annotate a text?

Here are some steps for annotating a text:
1.​ Skim through a text to develop a general understanding of it.
2.​ Circle the key words or terms in the text, and the vocabulary that are new to you.
3.​ Read each paragraph, think about the key ideas that you have read—(what is the author
arguing, or how is the author supporting the argument?) and underline the key ideas.
4.​ Write margin notes in your own words.
5.​ Mark the text using annotation symbols as per your purpose.
 6.​ Check your margin notes to be sure that they make sense to you, and you will be able to
decode main ideas and major supporting details from your annotation later without
rereading the text.
7.​ Go on to the next section or paragraph.

Using Annotation Symbols for a text on paper

Here are some of the symbols you can use to mark a text on paper.

Annotation symbols for texts on paper

Circle unknown vocabulary words you do not know

_____Underline main ideas

Check examples

Box transition words

?​ Place a question mark next to the text you do not understand

How will you deal with unfamiliar words or terms?

As you read a text, you may come across words or terms that are unfamiliar. As part of
annotation, you can circle those unfamiliar words. However, looking up every unfamiliar word in
the dictionary will interrupt your reading; therefore, it is important to guess the meaning of those
unfamiliar words first. You can try the following tactics for making an “educated guess” at the
meaning as you continue reading.

1.​ First, SOUND it out. Say the word—try a couple of ways. You might recognize the word
when you hear it.

2.​ Next, examine the STRUCTURE of the word. Look for familiar word parts, and see if
you can tell how the prefixes and suffixes shape the root meaning.

3.​ Then look at the CONTEXT. Guess at the word’s meaning from the way it is used in the
sentence. You may find that an informal definition is present in the surrounding
sentences. Or maybe you will see the meaning reflected in the next idea. Or, you may be
able to tell the meaning by the way the passage continues.

4.​ Only then, check the DICTIONARY. If you cannot understand what you are reading after
using the above steps, pause and turn to the dictionary or the textbook’s glossary list.
 When you find your word, skim through the whole paragraph and find the most relevant
meaning. Check the pronunciation too.

5.​ Then reinforce your understanding by WRITING a usable brief definition or synonym in
the margin of your reading.

Writing Margin Notes

Margin notes are the most important aspect of annotation. These notes can be on the symbols
you have used, for instance, you can write the meaning of an unknown word in the margin that
you have circled, or you may write the questions in your mind next to the question mark.
Another important type of notes you should write in the margin are the main ideas or messages
of the paragraphs. Depending on the requirements of your post-reading tasks, you can also
write the theme or Central Idea of the whole text in the margin.

The purpose of writing margin notes is to express your understanding of the main ideas or
messages in the text in your own words so that you can use these notes later. These notes are
usually short and written next to the paragraph, generally on the left margin of a text.

To write margin notes, read a paragraph of a text, and after reading, cover the text. Now ask
yourself questions such as-

-“What does the writer say in this paragraph?”,

-“What do I understand from this paragraph?”.

Next, write down your understanding of this paragraph in brief on the left margin. In this manner,
you can write margin notes for all the main ideas in a text.

To ensure that your margin notes clearly express your understanding of a specific paragraph (so
that you can use these notes later) you may have to do the following:

a.​ Write the main idea and the major supporting details using meaningful bullet points only
from that paragraph.
b.​ Do not include examples, explanations, or minor details in your margin notes.
c.​ Write your notes (the main idea and the major supporting details) using your own words.
Avoid copying the writer’s words.

Remember that academic essays are usually well structured where each body paragraph
usually explains only one main idea. On the other hand, in newspaper articles, scholarly
research articles or book chapters, several paragraphs may often explain one main idea. In
such cases, you can write only one margin note for those paragraphs.

Many students find that marking their study texts with symbols and writing margin notes
increase concentration while reading and enhance their understanding. Just deciding what to
circle, underline, or write in the margin encourages you to think critically and formulate your own
response to the text.

Significance of Reading as a pre-writing strategy

Reading is crucial in all stages of the writing process, but it plays a vital role in the pre-writing
stage. Reading various types of texts and annotating them effectively helps you understand the
topic and collect relevant information to develop the topic adequately when you write.

Asking Questions:
Asking questions when reading a text is an effective way of developing your understanding of
both the text and your topic for writing. As you read different relevant texts, you may seek
satisfying answers to the 5WH Questions: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, and How?

When you find answers to these questions, you may keep a margin note as part of your
annotation for future reference.

Answering these questions regarding your topic and the text you are reading will help you in
several ways, such as the following:

-to gain knowledge

-to think of your topic in new ways
-to discover issues of the topic that are unfamiliar to you
-to find more reading materials
-to organise your thoughts on the topic
-to create a plan for the writing task on your topic

These questions may also prompt you to research for more information by searching the
Internet.

Researching a topic
Whenever you pose some questions to understand a topic deeply and then look for answers,
you engage in research. Writing an informative assignment is not possible without doing some
research and reporting relevant information properly in your writing. This is why good writers
research their topics at the pre-writing stage.

As part of researching your topic, you can use the search engines on the Internet to see what
kinds of websites and reading texts are available on your topic. When you search the Internet,
type the specific keywords or terms from your broad topic, or the narrowed down focus of your
topic in the browser’s search engine. This will generate relevant search results containing those
keywords or specific terms.
Then, you can look over the search results and identify the most relevant texts. At this stage,
you can ask yourself the questions below:
●​ Is this text relevant to my topic and purpose?
●​ Does this text include facts or opinions?
●​ Is the information in this text reliable?
●​ Can I trust this writer and the source?

To find answers to your questions, you can apply skimming and scanning strategies and thus,
create a reading list of the most relevant texts very quickly.

Note-taking
After selecting the most relevant texts, the next step is to read them. As you read these texts,
you should annotate the sections that relate to your topic. You can underline important
information and write your understanding of the information in your own words as
margin notes. These annotation notes will help you later in the writing process.

You also need to keep a note of the following information for each borrowed ideas or
information:

a)​ the sources of information (the title of the text, writer’s name, website name)

b)​ the original ideas or information in the texts that are relevant to your purpose

c)​ your understanding of those ideas or information in your own words, and by retaining
original meaning to avoid the risk of plagiarism

Making mental connections

One important aspect of the pre-writing stage is to be able to make mental connections between
the purpose and requirements of your writing task, and the notes from your reading and
research. Making these mental connections will help you plan well for the next stage in the
writing process. Therefore, you can follow the steps below to make a mental connection at the
pre-writing stage:

1.​ Brainstorm your writing topic (do listing, mapping, freewriting, etc.) by using your
experience and observations
2.​ Read to understand your topic by asking 5WH questions
3.​ Research on your topic to develop a critical understanding of various issues related to
the topic
4.​ Find selective reading materials by applying skimming and scanning strategies
5.​ Annotate the selective reading materials including the notes on sources, relevant
ideas/information, and your understanding of those ideas/information.
6.​ Organize your understanding of the topic from these various sources or reading
materials in your own words in a notebook or journal
A piece of writing can be called effective when good ideas are expressed clearly and arranged
in a comprehensible order. This is why writers engage in a number of pre-writing tasks such as
above to gather information as per their purpose of writing on a topic. Using these strategies
discussed in this handout can help you confidently begin the writing process.