Active Reading: Previewing Nonfiction Books, Including Textbooks

Essays on the Teaching of English
Raymond Stopper
Based on His Book, Teaching English, How To….

Active Reading: Previewing Nonfiction Books, Including Textbooks

The biggest problem with reading long, long nonfiction books, including textbooks, is not getting started. We all are enthusiastic to begin reading a fresh, new book. The biggest problem is staying enthusiastic as the book begins to tire us, somewhere about the second chapter. Here’s how to start reading and keep reading without falling asleep.

1. Read the cover material, outside and inside, together with information about the author. Think about the title. What message does it imply?

2. Read the foreword or preface. Don’t read introductions. They are much too long and do not mean all that much because you have not read the book. Forewords and prefaces are short, usually no more than a couple of pages and they succinctly express the author’s point of view toward the material. They usually contain the main idea of those 570 or so pages.

3. Read the first and last paragraph of each chapter. They will introduce the topic of the chapter and summarize the main ideas of the chapter. It might be a good idea to briefly—and I mean briefly—summarize each chapter based on the first and last paragraph. You will begin already to raise questions about the contents of the book.

4. If some chapters stand out as being more important than others, begin with them. Read the first sentence of each intermediate paragraph. You will gain the details of the author’s ideas. If you become “hooked” on the first sentence of a paragraph, keep on reading until you have satisfied yourself that you now have a full explanation of what you wanted to know.

When you have read the first sentence of each paragraph of important chapters, go back and begin reading the first sentence of each paragraph in other chapters. If you’re not “hooked,” just keep reading the first sentence of each paragraph in the chapter.

5. In the process of reading the first sentence of each paragraph, you will answer almost every question you could have about the book.

The effects of this approach to textbooks will amaze you. When the professors lecture, you will understand what they are talking about. You will be able to ask intelligent questions. And, if you find some material that you had not covered, you can quickly go back to the book to read in more detail what you might have missed. This preview of nonfiction or textbooks will give you a great head start on the rest of the class, which will have little knowledge going in about the course. It will change your approach to study. You will truly become a student.