You’ve made it into college so I bet you know that you or your parents spent way too much money on all of those textbooks for them to just sit there untouched!  I know they’re huge and intimidating, but with a few tips and guidelines about the texts format (the way that they are organized) you’ll be ready to handle your assigned reading and be prepared for class.  Say goodbye to test anxiety and falling asleep while reading, the websites below will rescue you from those frequent occurrences!

First of all….

take some time to learn about your textbooks format!

Guess what…it’s okay to open the book and look through it even before your professor tells you to!  Actually it’s a really good idea and could make the course much easier in the long run.  Look at the table of contents in the front to see what you’ll be learning in the course.  Don’t forget about the index in the back, this can come in really handy when you’re studying and your not sure where the book talked about that key term.  Once you have been assigned to read chapters don’t start blindly reading from the beginning, you’ll have a much better understanding going into the text by first reading the chapter summary at the end of the chapter.  This tells you directly what the book finds to be the most important information from the whole long chapter.  Another thing to keep your eyes peeled for is figures throughout the chapter.  You know when you’re reading along and it says see Figure 3.2, it’s actually a good idea to do it!  These are usually graphs, tables, pictures, etc.  They are a must for visual learners and can really help clear up what may be confusing in written terms.  One other thing you always want to notice are the bold faced words throughout your chapters, these are the key vocabulary words and are usually very important in understanding concepts and in passing tests!  (See the vocabulary for students section to help you handle all of these new words!)  

**Now that you have learned the importance of understanding the way your textbooks are set up you are going in the right direction.  It’s very beneficial to take time to look through you’re textbooks and find the key elements that will make them more bearable and helpful to you in your reading and studying.  When you have done this, I think you should take a few moments to complete this study skills survey found at the below website.  Be honest and read the evaluation that it gives you about your study skills and textbook format knowledge sometimes the truth hurts and you may need to reevaluate some of the choices you’re making as a college student.

Study Skills Survey:  http://www.oakton.edu/resource/iss/readsvy.htm

I know you’ve learned a lot about understanding how your textbooks formats can actually help you with your reading and understanding of your assigned reading.  However, there are a few more websites that I recommend that offer great tips, discuss bad habits, and offer strategies to help you with your textbook reading.  Good luck and remember that you or your parents have paid a lot of money for those big textbooks that you’ve been lugging around, you might as well open them up and learn something!

Helpful textbook reading websites:

http://www2.smcvt.edu/src/studyskills/textbook_reading.htm

http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/read.html
 

- Contributed by Kelley Kaunisto, LTCY 524