Read! Read! Read!

One of the greatest gifts my parents gave me was a love of reading.  In our home, reading was a part of life too vital to be ignored or forgotten.  While I was a college student, this love of reading provided me with a huge advantage in that my need to read made it easier to comprehend the materials I read in class.  The added bonus was that being able to read a 500 page novel in a day made it easy to read a hundred pages of course text.  For those of you wondering how you can excel in classes and get through reading material quicker and with a better understanding of the material, all you have to do is READ! READ!  READ!

Techniques to Enhance Your Comprehension of What Your Read

Consider doing the following while reading text for courses:

• Read in sessions about thirty to forty minutes in length with a ten to fifteen minute break in between
• Generate an outline of what you read - this will not only help you retain the information, it will also provide you with a useful study guide when you are preparing for tests later on
• Use topic headings to your advantage – turn them into questions to be answered by readings
• Discuss readings with classmates/professors
• Avoid highlighting - write notes in margins of books with pencil

Suggested Readings/Authors:

The Legend of Huma, by Richard A. Knaak

The collected works of David Eddings, J. R. R. Tolkien and Edgar Allen Poe

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

The Redwall series by Brian Jacques

The Odyssey, by Homer

Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare

Back to Neil's Corner