Getting the Main Idea

Getting the main idea in reading is central to effective studying. You must learn what the author's central idea is, and understand it in your own way. Every paragraph contains a main idea. Main ideas are perfect for outlining textbooks. Make it a habit to find the main idea in each paragraph you read.

Extracting Important Details

Extracting important details mean that you locate in your reading main and most significant ideas. There is usually one important detail associated with every main idea. The more important details you can identify, the easier it will be to review for examinations because you have made a link between an idea and information that supports it. The more links you can make between details and ideas, as well as ideas themselves, the more powerful will be the efforts of your study.
The first things to ask yourself are: “Why you are reading the text? Are you reading with a purpose or just for pleasure? What do you want to know after reading it?” In other words, identify your purpose.

Once you know this, you can examine the text to see whether it is going to move you towards this goal. An easy way of doing this is to look at the introduction and the chapter headings. The introduction should let you know whom the book is targeted at, and what it seeks to achieve. Chapter headings will give you an overall view of the structure of the subject.

After grasping ideas from chapter introductions, ask yourself whether the book meets your needs. Ask yourself if it assumes too much or too little knowledge. If the book weren't ideal, would it be better to find a better one?

Take 1-2 minutes to skim through the article to find the core idea. Know what is being expressed. Do you need more details? If not, find another article.

Read lightly and flexibly. Know what you need. Slow down to fulfill your purpose, answering questions that are most important to you. Since very few words carry the meaning, speed up to pass redundant or useless information.

How "So What” Questions Help in Speed Reading?

Appreciation is a very simple but powerful technique for extracting the maximum amount of information from a simple fact.

Starting with a fact, ask the question 'So what?' - i.e. What are the implications of that fact? Keep on asking that question until all possible inferences have been drawn. Let’s take, for instance, a military example shown below:

• Fact: It rained heavily last night
• So what?
• The ground will be wet
• So what?
• It will turn into mud quickly
• So what?
• If many troops and vehicles pass over the same ground, movement will be progressively slower and more difficult as the ground gets muddier and more difficult.
• So what?
• Where possible stick to metal way or expect movement to be slower than normal.

Ask questions for learning. The important things to learn are usually answers to questions. Questions should lead to emphasis on the what, why, how, when, who and where of study content. Ask the questions as you read or study.

As you answer them, you will help to make sense of the material and remember it more easily because the process will make an impression on you. Those things that make impressions are more meaningful, and therefore more easily remembered. Don't be afraid to write the questions in the margins of textbooks, on lecture notes, or any available spaces. The more these notes are accessible to you, the more you will be able to remember and learn them quickly.

Be an Active Reader

Before you even look at the text, scan it, and read it, ask first the question, "What am I going to learn here? What is the author's conclusion? How does the author present the topic? What are the key points to the argument?" Such questions function to engage you in the activity. If you ask a question in a lecture, you always remember the answer to the question. Similarly, if you become an 'active reader' you are much more likely to retain the information that you amass.

Answer the Questions at the End of each Chapter

Most academic textbooks that students own contain exercises or quizzes at the end of each chapter to evaluate you on how much have you learned during the whole reading activity. It would be very helpful to answer these questions. If you have come across an item in which you can’t really answer, go back and read. At least, you would know what topics have you or have you not known.

Think about the text in three ways.

1. Consider the text itself, the basic information right there on the page. (This is the level of most high school readers and many college students);
2. Next think about what is between the lines, the conclusions and inferences the author means you to draw from the text;
3. Finally, go beyond thinking about the text. What creative, new, and different thoughts occur as you combine the knowledge and experiences with the ideas in the reading?