HOW TO READ ACADEMIC NONFICTION
Reading school books the way you read for pleasure wastes your time because you can’t retain what the professor needs you to retain.
Find a place free of distractions and sit at a desk with pencil and paper (highlighter optional). Do not lay in bed with your earphones on–why? Because this isn’t pleasure reading. This is school. This is work. This is what college will be like. Take notes on paper, not in the book itself. Thumbing through the book the night before the test is a waste of time.
Figure out how the text is arranged; most authors divide their texts into chapters. If it’s a short piece and not a whole book, treat it as one “chapter” if you want. YOU decide—but be able to defend your decision.
In most academic nonfiction, the beginning and ending of chapters (and essays) contain the big ideas, while the middle contains evidence and details in support of the big ideas. Your goal is to retain the BIG IDEAS, not the details. Therefore, you shouldn’t read the different parts of the chapter at the same speed. Read the beginning and ending of a chapter slowly and carefully. Skim–don’t skip–the meat of the chapter. When reading the meat of the chapter, slow down when it seems important or interesting, or when you feel lost or confused. If you can’t repair meaning, write questions you plan to ask the teacher.
On the text, do NOT purposelessly underline or use a highlighter. Most college students highlight “the important stuff” and then “study” it later. Waste of time. Highlighting is only useful if you give the highlight color a particular purpose. For example, I teach A.P. English III students, when analyzing style, to highlight emotional words. If your reason for reading is to retain big ideas, and you’ve no other purpose, put away the highlighter.
For each chapter (or section) of the text, complete a tree map. Here’s an example that should take 50-60 minutes total, 30-40 minutes when you’re experienced. Practice faithfully, and you’ll get better at test-taking and at reading in general.
Directions for the tree map categories:
Copying someone else’s work (from another student who read the same text) is busywork—a total waste of time. What’s important about this process I’m teaching you—truly—is the process of making decisions about what to write. Copying will have two consequences (1) you won’t be able to talk about the chapter the same way, and if I find out, you and the person from whom you copied fail for the entire month; (2) you won’t improve at multiple choice.
Reading school books the way you read for pleasure wastes your time because you can’t retain what the professor needs you to retain.
Find a place free of distractions and sit at a desk with pencil and paper (highlighter optional). Do not lay in bed with your earphones on–why? Because this isn’t pleasure reading. This is school. This is work. This is what college will be like. Take notes on paper, not in the book itself. Thumbing through the book the night before the test is a waste of time.
Figure out how the text is arranged; most authors divide their texts into chapters. If it’s a short piece and not a whole book, treat it as one “chapter” if you want. YOU decide—but be able to defend your decision.
In most academic nonfiction, the beginning and ending of chapters (and essays) contain the big ideas, while the middle contains evidence and details in support of the big ideas. Your goal is to retain the BIG IDEAS, not the details. Therefore, you shouldn’t read the different parts of the chapter at the same speed. Read the beginning and ending of a chapter slowly and carefully. Skim–don’t skip–the meat of the chapter. When reading the meat of the chapter, slow down when it seems important or interesting, or when you feel lost or confused. If you can’t repair meaning, write questions you plan to ask the teacher.
On the text, do NOT purposelessly underline or use a highlighter. Most college students highlight “the important stuff” and then “study” it later. Waste of time. Highlighting is only useful if you give the highlight color a particular purpose. For example, I teach A.P. English III students, when analyzing style, to highlight emotional words. If your reason for reading is to retain big ideas, and you’ve no other purpose, put away the highlighter.
For each chapter (or section) of the text, complete a tree map. Here’s an example that should take 50-60 minutes total, 30-40 minutes when you’re experienced. Practice faithfully, and you’ll get better at test-taking and at reading in general.
Directions for the tree map categories:
- Structure. Leave the top center box of the tree map blank for now. In the structure column, create detail boxes showing roughly how the chapter is broken down. What does he or she talk about first? What does he talk about second? What does he talk about third? And so on. DO NOT SUMMARIZE. The structure column should be like a tiny outline breaking down the pieces of the chapter into tiny titles.
- Argument. At the beginning of the chapter and at the end of the chapter, read slowly and carefully. What is the author’s argument? If it looks the same as the argument for the other chapters, you’re not being specific enough.
- Support. In this column, make notes of the specific details from the meat of the chapter that interest you the most, and the specific details that best support the author’s argument.
- Bias. In this column make notes about the author’s bias. Is it conservative? Progressive? What other labels could you attach to it, and why?
- In the Frame of Reference, write the book title, author, and chapter number (in case the page is misplaced).
- In the top box of the tree map, write your own title for the chapter—not the one used by the author.
Copying someone else’s work (from another student who read the same text) is busywork—a total waste of time. What’s important about this process I’m teaching you—truly—is the process of making decisions about what to write. Copying will have two consequences (1) you won’t be able to talk about the chapter the same way, and if I find out, you and the person from whom you copied fail for the entire month; (2) you won’t improve at multiple choice.
