One Way to Read a History Textbook Chapter
Let's assume you have a lot of reading and not enough time. Sound familiar? You want to make every second count. The least effective way to read the chapter of a history textbook is to start at the beginning and read it to the bitter end. There's a better way, it will save you time, and it will allow you to retain more of what you've read. It's called active reading. One of the most important skills I learned in graduate school was the following reading method.
What's active about active reading is the reader's brain. It is constantly questioning, summarizing, defining, and re-organizing the material presented in the text, but it is doing this in a particular way that anyone can learn, internalize, and use for many other texts. How does it work?
1. First, read the title of the chapter carefully. Really look at it and take it apart. Embedded in almost all chapter titles are key-terms to understanding the entire chapter. Take the chapter heading and convert it into a question. (For the chapter title "The Challenge of Reconstruction," you might form the question, "What specifically was the challenge of Reconstruction?")
Next, scan the main headings of the chapter (these are usually in boldface or italics). Note on a piece of paper the key-terms that you find there and, as with the chapter-heading, convert all chapter main and sub-headings into questions. Write these down as well.
2. Now pause a moment. Much of your work is done already. You now have a cluster of key-terms and some questions that get at the heart of what this chapter is about. This is the chapter in a nutshell.
3. Now read the chapter specifically to answer the questions you've formulated from the chapter titles and begin to define your key-terms. These terms are your map and the destination all in one; armed with them, you can now read the chapter more efficiently and purposefully.
4. But not yet! First read the introduction to the chapter. It is easily the most important part of the chapter. Here is where the writer has put all the stuff that's important. It may lack historical detail - dates and names and decrees - but these will come soon enough. Look through the intro to see if your key-terms are here: they should be.
5. When you've finished reading the introduction (noting again key-terms, circling them, and defining them briefly, if only mentally), flip to the end of the chapter and read the chapter summary or conclusion. It should sound like the introduction and bring home to you again the big concepts and key-terms discussed in this chapter. Read it carefully. Even twice.
6. Only now, with this step, do you actually read the chapter. Congratulations. But do not read it passively, vacantly, merely to get to the end. Read ONLY to answer the questions you devised from the chapter title and subheadings. Read ONLY to define the key-terms you've already written down.
7. Finally, at the end of your reading, finish up by asking yourself, "What are the two or three big things (themes/topics) the author is getting at in this chapter?" Write these down in your own words (this is important!) and reward yourself for a job well done with a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey. Life is short: eat all the ice-cream you can.
You first reaction to this method may be "Wow--this is more work than my old way of reading. Thanks, Mr Van, but I'll stick to my old way of doing things."
I can almost guarantee that, at first, this method will seem awkward and difficult. It is, at first.
But consider this: When you were a toddler, imagine how 'awkward and difficult' walking must have felt when crawling seemed so much better and 'natural.' You never fell while crawling, right? No balancing act. No grasping clumsily at chairs and legs.
So why aren't you crawling now? Once you've used this reading method a few times and internalized the steps, it will be second nature to you. And it will put you light years ahead of your fellow students. Even if you perform only some of the steps an hour or so before class, you will be far ahead of those who simply dive into a reading with no purpose and hope to sop up all the info as best they can.
Most of the time in this life we have the tools we need to get what we want; we just don't use them. Remember in the Wizard of Oz when the 'wizard' tells the scarecrow, tinman, and lion that, in short, they always had what they needed to begin with: heart, brain, courage? The Wizard merely affirms their inborn gifts. Now that all of you know this method, you have the tools to increase your comprehension and retention of textbook material a hundred fold.
However, experience has shown me that most of you will not even take this method for a spin, and the few who do will drop it and return to their inefficient and 'comfortable' reading strategy after a single try. It is the path of least resistance. That's to say (and in spite of this nifty handout), most of you will opt for 'crawling' again.
I invite you to walk. To run.