Reading Skills

Choosing the Right Book

 

A lot of the time at college, your teachers will tell you or recommend the texts they want you to read. Teachers have often read these texts themselves, so they know that it's likely to be useful and accessible.

Other times, however, you may have to choose your own books or texts to study. This might be because you are completing a project, a piece of coursework or research, or just because you feel you need to read more about a subject to improve your understanding. 

Picking the right book in a library, or the right text online, can be difficult with so much to choose from. So where do you start?

BREAK

Step 1:

Make sure you have narrowed down exactly what you are looking for. There's no point looking for an 'art' book, as there could be hundreds of different ones, but if you look for a book on 'impressionism', then you've narrowed down the choice. And if you look for a book on 'Claude Monet' then you've narrowed it again. It's best, therefore, to think before you search to make sure you don't waste your time or get distracted or discouraged.

The same goes for online research - narrow your parameters to get the best results. Use specific key words and phrases. 

BREAK

Step 2: 

When you find a book, read the back cover (or inside flap) to get a general idea of its contents.

Take a look at the table of contents or chapter listing near the front and the index at the back - do any words jump out at you as being useful?

Skim through the book to see the layout of the chapters - any subheadings or margin notes, graphs or illustrations/pictures that might look useful.

If you're working online, skim through the webpage for key words, phrases, images, etc.

Check the author of the webpage (see if it has an 'About' section or an accredited copyright) to make sure that what you are using is a credible and reliable source. If they have used quotes, statistics or graphs/illustrations, have they been labeled or explained thoroughly so that you know where they came from originally or how they were collated?

BREAK

Step 3:

If you're ready to proceed with the book, read the beginnings and ends of a few chapters or any chapter summaries or conclusions.

Likewise, if you're ready to proceed with the website, read the beginnings and ends of paragraphs or the introduction and conclusion to the page.

This will help you to decide if the language is accessible to you and if the information is relevant to your needs.