thing about it? There are different ways you can approach the process of reading to retain

and understand the text. This tutorial will introduce a process called SQ4R, which you

may apply to both book and journal article reading.

SQ4R, what does that mean? It’s an acronym for the steps to effectively read and understand

text: Survey the section or chapter, write Questions for each heading and subheading,

Read the information one section at a time, Record important information by taking notes,

Recite the information out loud, and Review the information learned in that section. Let’s

look closer at each of those.

The survey step is intended to determine how the information is organized, and what it

is you need to learn. Take about a minute to read the headings and subheadings as well

as the final summary paragraph or conclusion.

Check out graphs, charts, images, and skim their descriptive captions. This will help

you visualize and make sense of the body text when you read through it later.

Now you should have a general idea of how this text is organized as well as its main

ideas.

Turn each heading and subheading into a question. Ask yourself what you already know about those

topics. Even if you don’t know much, this helps your brain associate the new information

with the old information and it becomes easier to remember. Use some of these question words

to get you started: which, when, what, why, where, how, and who. If it would make you

more comfortable, write down these questions to refer to as you read. Now you know what

to watch for and focus on for the next step: reading.

For the reading step, start by carefully reading the text, looking for answers to the questions

you created. Read one section at a time, reminding yourself of your questions for each section.

It’s helpful to take notes while you read. As you read write down definitions, details,

facts, and explanations of concepts. Be as brief as possible, use single words or short

phrases in place of sentences where it makes sense. You can use these notes later when

you answer your questions.

When you finish each section read your notes out loud to yourself. You will make more associations

in your brain between what you already know and what you are reading. This helps you to

retain the information for use later.

After you finish a few sections, look at your questions and try to answer them. Can you?

Explain the answers to yourself out loud, this will help to reinforce those associations

you made in the recite stage. If you had trouble, feel free to consult your notes, or even go

back and read the section again until you are confident that you know the information.

The concepts from SQ4R were designed for textbooks, but you can apply them to any other book or

journal article. For books, survey the introductory and conclusion paragraphs of a chapter to

pull out the key facts and information, these will help you formulate questions. For articles,

an abstract, introduction, and conclusion will typically be the key parts to survey.