Study Reading

SQ3R is a five-stage technique to aid reading comprehension. It stands for: Survey - Question - Read - Recall - Review.

Survey

• Examine the whole before you read the parts — survey the book first, then the chapter, then the paragraph.
• Also look at the title, headings, and subheadings, captions under pictures, charts, graphs or maps, introductory and concluding paragraphs and any summaries.
  
  

Question

• Ask yourself:
  Why are you reading this? What do you already know? What do you want to know? What is new or interesting about this material? Does this support / supplement / contradict what I already know?
• Try turning the title, headings, and/or subheadings into questions.
  
  

Read

• Skim read at the first reading, looking for the main ideas and general structure of the text.
• Only then read for the purpose of making notes on the key points.
• Look for answers to the questions you first raised.
• Reduce your speed for difficult passages — stop and re-read parts which are not clear.
• Read only a section at a time and recite after each section.
  
  

Recall
Can I recall the key points without re-reading the text? Recall helps you to concentrate, and to make your reading active rather than passive.

• Orally ask yourself questions about what you have just read and/or summarize, in your own words, what you read.
• Take notes from the text but write the information in your own words.
• Underline/highlight important points you've just read.
• Use the method of recitation which best suits your particular learning style but remember, the more senses you use the more likely you are to remember what you read.
  
  Triple strength learning: Seeing, saying, hearing
  Quadruple strength learning: Seeing, saying, hearing, writing!!!
  
  

Review

• Look back at the text to check your recall. Have you missed anything of importance?

You might find the following plan useful:

• Day One
  After you have read and recite the entire chapter, write questions for those points you have highlighted/underlined in the margins. If your method of recitation included note-taking in the left hand margins of your notebook, write questions for the notes you have taken.
• Day Two
  Page through the text and/or your notebook to re-acquaint yourself with the important points. Cover the right hand column of your text/note-book and orally ask yourself the questions in the left hand margins. Orally recite or write the answers from memory. Make "flash cards" for those questions which give you difficulty. Develop mnemonic devices for material which need to be memorized.
• Days Three, Four and Five
  Alternate between your flash cards and notes and test yourself (orally or in writing) on the questions you formulated. Make additional flash cards if necessary.
• Weekend
  Using the text and notebook, make a Table of Contents — list all the topics and sub-topics you need to know from the chapter. From the Table of Contents, make a Study Sheet/ Spatial Map. Recite the information orally and in your own words as you put the Study Sheet/Map together.
• Now that you have consolidated all the information you need for that chapter, periodically review the Sheet/Map so that at test time you will not have to cram.

These techniques can be used on any texts; textbooks and lecture notes. They require a great deal of self-discipline, but have been found to work for many students.

Text from: The School of Law, University of Manchester, and Robinson, Francis Pleasant, (1961, 1970) Effective study (4th ed.), Harper & Row, New York, NY