Reading and notetaking

This resource will help you:
•    Understand why reading is an essential skill for academic success at university.
•    Identify common challenges in academic reading and how to overcome them.
•    Explore and adapt strategies for effective academic reading and note-taking.

University courses require a large amount of reading.

Reading at university is different from reading for pleasure in the way that at university the main goal is to extract and retain information and use the new information to demonstrate your learnings.

In your reading you will come across a lot of new words and terminology and this might seem to make reading more difficult.  But these words are important. Within each discipline, there is a specific nomenclature (a system of terms) which you will need to learn and use. For instance, if you are going to be a lawyer, you need to be able to talk and write like a lawyer.

Even avid readers may find reading at university new, complex, and hard when they first start. But with practice and some good strategies, it will get easier.

This guide presents examples of reading strategies which you can adopt and adapt to improve how effectively (and efficiently) you read at university. 

In the rest of the guide, we will introduce you to a useful strategy for systematic reading and notetaking. You can adapt this strategy to your own personal style, or you can use another strategy. The key to a good study strategy is one which will help you systematically:

• Get set
• Read
• Do 
• Review