It is very important to read independently and effectively to learn significant portions of a course of study. It may be the case that you have failed to develop strong reading skills. You hope that the reading approaches you have used up until this point will work for you. Sadly, too many students read passively, failing to construct accurate comprehension with the guidance of a purpose or goal for reading. The result is that too many students begin to dislike their reading and come to view it as a necessary evil. Reading doesn’t have to be an onerous task that you dread. But, to avoid these ill feelings about reading, you will need to invest a little time to develop more active reading strategies. This may be the first time that you consciously use a strategy for reading and so it may feel awkward for a period of time. However, our experience shows, and reading specialists know, that an active approach to reading will likely be more productive and interesting for you.
Along with writing and reasoning, reading is one of the most
important activities in which students have to engage. This is a
fact of life. It is also, unfortunately, a fact of life that most students
have problems with reading. There always seems to be too much
reading to do and never enough time in which to do it. Reading
lists are often too long, lecturers give too many obscure references
and even if you were simply to follow up your main interests you
would soon find (if you have not done so already) that there is
too much information to absorb and too little time in which to
absorb it. As a result some students form the view that if only
they could read faster, things would be better. Perhaps that is
why you have opened this book.
Now, of course there are some advantages to getting through
the reading you have to do in the shortest time possible, including
the fact that it may give you the chance to do something else
with the time you save. That is why a book that claimed to teach
students to read faster would probably be an instant success.