- Let's talk about some helpful strategies

for reading difficult texts.

The first and maybe most important helpful strategy
is called multiple engagement.
This essentially means that you want to interact
with the text more than once.
There are a couple of catchy ways to describe this.
I'll give you two of them.
One is preview, read, review.
The other is pre-reading, reading, post-reading.
They both describe multiple engagement
which basically means that again,
you look at the text more than once.
You might read the Wikipedia article about a text
to give yourself some context.
That will be preview.
Then sit down and read the text,
that's called a critical read.
That will be the second engagement.
And then after you've read it,
you might go back and close read some certain sections
or go to a lecture on the text
or talk about with a classmate.
That will be your third engagement.
The review or the post-reading.
Another great strategy is to go out of your way
to identify key terms and concepts
early in your engagement with the text.
There are a couple of good ways
to know that you're looking at a key term or concept.
First of all, if a term or concept appears in the title
or in a sub-title,
it's almost certainly important.
If the author repeats a term or concept
throughout a text,
that's a good sign that it is important.
And if the author pauses to define
a term or concept in the body of the text,
again, it's likely important.
You also want to look out for signal phrases.
For things like pivots and strong verbs
that signal to you
that the author is saying something important.
Let me give you some examples.
A signal phrase might be something like
contrary to popular belief,
A, B, C.
A pivot might be something like
turning to my next point, X, Y, Z.
And a strong verb might be something like
utterly destroying his plans, Simmonds made a grave error.
It's a great idea to take notes while you read.
That can do two things for you.
In the moment that you're reading,
taking some notes will help you focus your attention
and note down what's important in the text.
Later on, when you're doing your multiple engagement
and you come back to review a text,
looking over your notes can help you remember
what are the important parts.
A great strategy when dealing with a difficult text
is to use an interlocutor.
By which I mean
talk with someone about the text.
If you can talk with the professor or the TA,
that's fantastic.
But the person you talk with doesn't need to be an expert.
It can be a classmate or a friend.
You can call your brother and tell him what you're reading.
Any kind of conversation about the text
is likely to be helpful.
What's especially good is to talk with a classmate
because that will be good for both of you.
Say you take the time to summarize the text that you've read
as you understand for your classmate.
It's good for your classmate
because it helps him or her understand the text better
and it's good for you
because you put yourself through the exercise
of taking the ideas from the text
and expressing them in your own words.
Which is very helpful to solidify the information
in your mind.
Finally,
it's a good idea to ask yourself some questions as you go.
Ask yourself, what's the author trying to accomplish
with this paragraph?
What's the big argument here?
Am I following along?
You may need to refocus your attention a little bit
if you're not able to answer these questions
in the middle of reading a text.
And if you're taking a class that involves a difficult text,
you can ask yourself questions like
how does this text fit into the larger course?
What does the professor want me to get out of this text?
These are really helpful strategies to help
when you're reading a difficult text.