Motivation and Learning Strategies for College Success : A Self-management Approach

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190  CHAPTER 8

You may have completed your readings but cannot recall much of the

information you read a short time ago. In fact, you may have for-

gotten much of what you read by the time you finished reading the

assignment.

What else do you do beyond simply reading a textbook? Do you

ask yourself questions about what you have read? Do you attempt to

summarize the author’s main points? How do you know that you have

identified the main ideas in a chapter? What strategies do you use to

remember what you read?

Many students underline passages in their textbooks as they read.

Unfortunately, underlining is a rehearsal strategy that does not require

much thinking about the content and, as a result, does not help move

material into long-term memory. Another problem is that irrelevant

information is often underlined along with relevant information.

When it comes time to review the understanding of the text, the

underlining may be confusing. Thus, it is possible to spend consider-

able time underlining a textbook and still not remember most of the

important ideas in a chapter. Underlining must be used in concert with

other reading strategies.

I ask you to assess your present reading strategies in this chapter

and determine how successful they are in helping you achieve your

academic objectives. After studying this chapter, you will be able to

use effective learning strategies to improve your reading comprehen-

sion and retention.

WHAT DOES RESEARCH TELL US ABOUT GOOD READERS?

Good readers attempt to comprehend and remember what they read

by using specific learning strategies to manage their understanding.

The following is a summary of these strategies (Dole, Duffy, Roehler,

& Person, 1991):

• Determining importance. Good readers identify main ideas
  and separate them from examples and supporting details.
  Poor readers often underline or highlight text as they read
  and do not differentiate between important and less impor-
  tant ideas.


• Summarizing information. Good readers summarize informa-
  tion by reviewing all the ideas in a passage or chapter, differ-
  entiate important from unimportant ideas, and then synthesize
  the ideas to create a statement that represents the meaning of
  the passage or chapter. Poor readers do not stop to summarize
  what they have read.


• Drawing inferences. Good readers use inferencing extensively to
  fill in details omitted in a text and to elaborate on what they