Third Time's the Charm
You may worry that you do not read fast enough to keep up with your academic work. It's important, when reading, to remember that efficiency is a more useful goal than speed. If you read something very quickly, but don't remember most of it, are not able to apply it, or can't connect it to other readings, then you are not being efficient.
When your purposes for reading make it appropriate to read deeply—you want to be able to follow the argument, to discuss it with your classmates, to critique it in a paper, or you need to be able to remember the material for a test—you will probably want to read a text more than once. This is a normal part of the reading process, something good readers usually do when they need to read deeply.
You may find that reading three times, in three different ways, may actually make your reading more efficient than reading it once through slowly. Here are the three different ways, with some strategies to choose from each time through:
- Getting the Big Picture: Pre-reading strategies, like previewing, skimming, and predicting, are some of the best way to improve the efficiency of your reading.
- Reading Actively, line-by-line: This is the linear reading most of us think of as "really" reading. Annotating, note-taking, or questioning your reading while you work will improve your comprehension.
- Reviewing and Summarizing: Going back to your pre-reading questions to see if you answered them, summarizing what you have read, or elaborating, will make sure that you have achieved your purpose in reading.
Some people find that in the long run, reading three times in three different ways makes the overall process faster, as well as more efficient, because struggling through a text line-by-line just once is actually slower than making each time through the text serve its own purpose.
