How does the disposition or layout of a text prepare you for reading? Is the material broken into parts-subtopics, sections, or the like? Are there long and unbroken blocks of text or smaller paragraphs or “chunks” and what does this suggest? How might the identified parts of a text guide you toward understanding the line of inquiry or the arc of the argument that's being made?.

Texts demand different things of you as you read, so whenever you can, register the type of information you’re presented with. If an author is unfamiliar or unknown in an essay collection, does an editor introduce them (by supplying brief biographical information, an assessment of the author’s work, concerns, and importance)?

Is the author known to you already? If so, how does their reputation or credentials (like an institutional affiliation) influence your perception of what you are about to read?.

What does the presence of headnotes, an abstract, or other prefatory material tell you?.

But you can learn a great deal more about the organization and purpose of a text by taking note of features other than its length. You’ve probably engaged in one version of previewing in the past, when you’ve tried to determine how long an assigned reading is (and how much time and energy, as a result, it will demand from you).

These very preliminary impressions offer you a way to focus your reading. Previewing enables you to develop a set of expectations about the scope and aim of the text. Look “around” the text before you start reading. Butīut as they become habits, you'll notice the differences - both in what you “see” in a course reading, and in the confidence with which you approach your texts.

If you're used to doing little more than moving your eyes across the page, they may feel awkward at first, and you may have to deploy them consciously. While the strategies described below are (for the sake of clarity) listed sequentially, you typically do most of them simultaneously. So how should you approach reading in this new environment? College students rarely have the luxury of successive re-readings of material, however, given the pace of life in and out of the classroom. The amount of reading will almost certainly be greater. Your college reading assignments will probably be more substantial and more sophisticated than those you are used to from high school. Research has shown that students who read deliberately retain more information and retain it longer. Critical reading-active engagement and interaction with texts-is essential to your academic success at Harvard, and to your intellectual growth.

A guide to annotating an article