Unit 1　Movie

Section I　Focus on Strategies for Textbook Learning—Introducing SQ3R

If you are reading a best-seller by a writer like Dan Brown, you more than likely let your mind drift along with the story, almost like you were dreaming it. However, this dreamy, unfocused approach, perfect for leisure reading, is not appropriate for textbooks. With textbooks, you need a systematic but flexible system that can take into account the difficulty of the material, the author's writing style, and the goals of your assignment. SQ3R is flexible enough to take all three elements into account.

S: Survey to Get a General Overview and Make Predictions

When you begin a textbook assignment, don't just open your textbook and start reading. Instead, to survey or preview the material using the general sequence of steps described in the following. Although the steps in a survey may increase or decrease according to text difficulty and your knowledge of the material, these seven steps are almost always essential.

1) Read the title. Consider what it suggests about the chapter's content.

2) Read all introductory material. Introductory material includes chapter outlines, lists of questions, goals, and objectives, all of which identify what the author expects readers to learn.3) Use the title and introduction to form a general question or two about what's covered in the chapter. Check your memory to see if you have any prior knowledge, or previous experience, related to the topic discussed.

4) Read the headings and opening sentence of chapter sections. If the material is especially difficult or unfamiliar, expand this step: Read the last sentence of every chapter section or even the first and last sentence of every paragraph.

5) Look at all visual aids. Visual aids include pictures, photos, maps, charts, boxes, icons and graphs. If captions or explanations accompany the visual aids, read them, too. Ask yourself what each visual aid suggests about the chapter's content. If specific icons are used consistently in the chapter, see if you can figure out what kinds of information they identify.

6) Pay attention to words printed in boldface or in the margin of the page. With particularly important or difficult courses, expand this step to include jotting boldface or italicized terms in the margins. As you read, you can then add definitions to the terms noted in the margins.

7) Read end-of-chapter summaries and questions. If there is no end-of-chapter summary, read the last page of the chapter.

Q: Ask and Answer Questions While Reading

Many students complain that they lose concentration when they study. This isn't unusual. It happens to all of us when we try to absorb new and difficult material for any length of time. Still, the problem of failing concentration can be considerably reduced if you ask questions while reading. Raising and answering questions during a study session can help you remain mentally active throughout your reading. Using questions to maintain your concentration can also keep you alert to key points addressed in the chapter.

R1: Read Difficult Material in Sections or Chunks

If you have an overall picture of a chapter or an article's contents and you know some of the questions you want to answer, it's time to start reading. Remember, though, that textbook study sessions shouldn't last more than one and a half to two hours. Your eyes could keep going a good deal longer than that, but your brain probably couldn't, and your concentration would be less focused. It's better to plan on a two-hour maximum study session so that you can focus the whole time.

R2: See How Much You Can Recall Right After Reading

When an author's words are right before our eyes, we usually think we understand them. Yet if we look away from the page and try to recall what we've read, we often discover that what we remember is a muddle or incomplete. That's what makes the recall step of SQ3R so important. It's a way of monitoring your understanding before going on to the next section of a chapter or an article.

But there's another reason why recalling right after reading is critical: Most people are inclined to forget new information right after reading it. Fortunately, though, with the passage of time, the rate of forgetting slows down, and we forget less as time passes. That means anything we do to fix newly absorbed information into long-term memory right after reading—when the rate of forgetting is the highest—improves our chances of remembering what we have read, even weeks or months later.

R3: Review Right After Completing the Assignment

The third R in SQ3R refers to the review that takes place after a chapter is completed. The first goal of review is to get a sense of how the parts of a chapter connect. The second goal of a first review is to confirm or revise your initial predictions about a chapter's contents.