Studying from a Textbook :: How to Get Started
Through trial and error across my academic career, I’ve developed a system of textbook studying that’s been very successful for me even in graduate school. This post outlines my basic procedure. Of course, different techniques work for different people, so be sure to pick and choose which ideas you add to your own strategies. Thanks in advance for reading!
Reading a textbook is a formidable task; after all, they contain a lot of information per page across a lot of pages. Therefore, it’s useful to divide the book into more manageable pieces. Most textbooks do a pretty good job of this by pre-dividing the material into sections (or even subsections). If there’s no pre-existing division (or if each division is fairly lengthy), I recommend focusing on about 10 pages at a time. However you choose to divide, my basic strategy amounts to this:
Tackle the textbook section-by-section, only moving onto a new section once you’re comfortable with the previous section.
If you’re under a time constraint, then I’d say make yourself as comfortable as you can within that constraint.
This begs the question: how do you become comfortable with a section? Well, you’ll need to read it more than once. Today I’m primarily discussing how to make your first reading as useful as possible, especially for future readings.
First off, I suggest reading through the section in its entirety on your first pass. There will be material you don’t understand, but that’s okay: spend a couple of minutes trying to understand it and then move on. During your first reading, you’re getting the lay of the land; you don’t have to understand everything perfectly (or even at all).
Along the way, I keep track of my understanding via sticky notes, flags, and index cards.
I keep three types of index cards as I read, each with its own theme:
Questions: This index card lists questions I think of while reading, usually organized by the page number on which I have the question. Questions include things like “What’s [specific terminology] mean?”, or “Is this related to [some other topic]?”, or even as generic as “What is [this subsection] talking about?”
Definitions: When a new word is introduced, I write it down on my definitions card. Beside each word I draw a bubble in one of three colors, with each color representing my current understanding of the word and related concepts: green means “fine as is”, orange means “could use attention”, and red means “absolutely needs attention.”
Notations: Some textbooks use abbreviations or symbols that I don’t recognize, so I keep an index card of these notations for quick reference.
You can easily replace this system’s index cards with notebook pages or similar media. Whatever works best for you!
My Sticky Notes and Flags Strategy
Using sticky notes placed within the textbook, I summarize challenging paragraphs and recap important ideas. This process forces me to grapple with the text, ultimately resulting in nice one-sentence summaries. These summaries help concepts stick in my brain and are extremely useful on subsequent reads of the text. I also use sticky notes to write questions that I couldn’t fit on my questions card. For the most difficult passages, I use flags: a quick, wordless way of saying “What in the world is this author talking about???”
Post-Reading Analysis and Subsequent Reading
I love this system because it not only lets me know how I feel about the material, but also generates specific concrete tasks to better my understanding. The vague task that is “learn this subject” becomes the more manageable tasks of “answer these questions”, “learn these words”, and “summarize these topics.”
I try to do the first reading in a single study session (although it’s not imperative to do so). Then, in a separate study session, I look up topics and words that I struggled with. The internet is particularly useful for this! Once I’ve improved my understanding some, I begin reading through the section again, this time with a fine-toothed comb. I use the notes I made the first time as guidelines for where I should spend my time and energy.
It’s very likely that during my second (and subsequent) reads I’ll think of new questions or come up with new ways of recapping material; in that case, I record them just as I did during the first reading.
In this way, I keep revisiting material I don’t understand until I feel like I understand it; again, external resources can be very useful for this! I only consider the section completed once I have a solid understanding of the section’s terminology and big ideas. Chances are I’ll still have questions at that point, but that’s okay:
I aim to be comfortable with the material, which is not the same as understanding 100% of what’s written in the textbook.
So, yeah! That’s my method in a nutshell. I hope you find parts of it useful in your own studies!
Thanks for reading! I’m wishing you the best of luck!
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