Understand and Remember What You Read!

0:00 Hello, my name is Emma, and today I am going to teach you how to read better.

0:07 So, when you go to high school or university or even for work,

0:12 sometimes you have to read very difficult things in English.

0:16 I'm going to teach you a method today to help you

0:21 understand what you read better and remember what you read better.

0:25 Now, first of all, I just want to show you how I used to read textbooks.

0:30 So, this is a book from when I was in university.

0:37 What you will see is everything is highlighted.

0:40 So, I would take a highlighter, and I would just highlight everything.

0:45 Now, this is not a good idea.

0:48 It did not help me remember the information.

0:52 Instead, what I should have been doing

0:55 is something like this method, the SQ3R method.

1:00 So, the SQ3R method, many teachers use this method when they teach,

1:05 and it's a method to help you read better.

1:10 Specifically, there are five steps.

1:13 The first step is survey.

1:17 The second step is question.

1:19 These steps happen before you read,

1:21 and I will go through each of these steps in detail in a moment.

1:26 Then we have the third step, which is you actually read.

1:30 Then the fourth step, recite, and the fifth step, review.

1:34 These two steps are done after reading immediately.

1:38 So, by using these five steps when you read, you can understand a lot more,

1:46 and that is very important when you are reading difficult books,

1:51 especially if English is not your first language.

1:54 These tips can also help people who English is their first language,

1:59 but they're just trying to remember more of what they read.

2:02 So now, let's get started by understanding what you do when you survey.

2:08 The first step in the SQ3R method is to survey what you're going to read.

2:16 So, I've chosen here a textbook I had to read in university,

2:21 Principles of Human Physiology.

2:23 This was a very difficult textbook to read.

2:27 So, what you can do if you have something difficult

2:30 to read like this is imagine I'm looking at this page.

2:36 The first thing I want to do before I read

2:41 everything is I want to prepare my brain for the information.

2:45 So, I'm going to look at the pictures,

2:47 if there's any pictures, try to figure out what the pictures mean.

2:52 If there's any graphs or tables, I might look at those.

2:57 I will look at headings.

2:58 So, right here, I don't know if you see it, but in green, there's a heading.

3:03 It says structure at the molecular level.

3:06 I'm going to look at anything that has a heading or a subheading,

3:10 and I'm going to think about, okay, what is this going to be about?

3:13 What is this going to tell me about?

3:16 Another thing I can do is look at anything in bold.

3:19 So, this page actually has some writing that's in bold,

3:22 and there are some definitions, so I might quickly look at that.

3:26 The point is, when I survey, before I read,

3:30 I look at headings, subheadings, bold text, charts, graphs,

3:36 and photos, and the point is to start to think,

3:39 okay, what am I going to be reading about?

3:43 It prepares my brain for new information, and that's why I'm doing this.

3:48 It gets you ready for the actual reading you're about to do.

3:53 This should not take long, maybe a minute or two minutes.

3:57 It's a very quick thing to do.

3:59 You're just very quickly looking at what

4:01 you're going to read before you read it.

4:04 The second step in our method is to question.

4:09 Before you read, it's a good idea to create

4:13 some questions about what you're about to read.

4:15 So, the way you can do this is you can open up your book.

4:20 So, here's the book I'm reading, and again,

4:23 I find those headings or subheadings, and I can ask questions about them.

4:29 So, in this case, the first heading I see says dating techniques,

4:34 so I might ask a question.

4:38 What are dating techniques?

4:48 Okay, and then I might look

4:51 at another heading that says relative dating methods, so I might ask a question.

4:57 What are relative dating methods?

4:59 And then I see there is something in bold, F-U-N TRIO.

5:04 I don't know what that is.

5:06 I might ask, what is the F-U-N TRIO?

5:09 What does it stand for?

5:11 And then I might look at this picture, so you can see a picture here.

5:16 I might say, what's this a picture of?

5:19 What does this line mean?

5:22 So, asking questions before you read is a good idea.

5:26 This is just one example, but again,

5:29 you turn whatever you're reading, turn the headings into questions.

5:34 What, why, how, when, where, these types of questions.

5:39 And then, again, asking questions before you

5:42 read helps you become an active reader.

5:46 And remember, when you're actively reading,

5:49 you understand better and you remember more.

5:53 So, now it's time to actually read.

5:56 So, we've already surveyed the book, we've already asked some questions.

6:02 The third step is reading the actual thing you need to read.

6:07 So, the first tip is read carefully.

6:10 Take your time.

6:11 You might have to reread parts, and that's okay.

6:15 And try to answer the questions you came up with during the Q part of the SQ3R.

6:23 So, think about, remember you had questions

6:26 about the subheadings and the headings, you can,

6:29 or some of the pictures, you can try to answer those questions as you read.

6:34 You can also look for key points in what you're reading.

6:37 If you see a definition,

6:39 that might be important, you know, what something means.

6:43 You can look at examples,

6:45 try to understand the main ideas of what you're reading.

6:50 And write down important information.

6:52 So, remember I showed you the book I used in my first year of university.

6:57 I used a highlighter and highlighted everything.

7:00 By my third year of university, I'd learned.

7:03 So, this book I had to read in my third year of university.

7:06 And what you'll see is all these little tabs here.

7:09 But I started to use sticky notes.

7:12 And so, what I would do when I would read is I would read something,

7:17 and then I would write down questions,

7:19 or I would write down key points that I was reading, and I'd use sticky notes.

7:25 Sometimes I would actually write in the actual book.

7:29 Some people hate doing that, and that's okay.

7:32 Some people like to write in their books, and that's okay, too.

7:36 Whatever works for you.

7:37 But the main thing is you want to start thinking,

7:40 "What am I reading that is important?

7:43 What do I need to remember?" So, ask yourself these questions as you read.

7:49 Again, ask yourself, "Is this important?

7:52 Why or why not?" There's a lot of information in these books,

7:57 and some of it's details that you might not need to remember.

8:02 So, it's a skill to learn what do I need to remember,

8:05 what's important, what should I take notes on, and what is less important.

8:12 One trick is if you're in university or college,

8:17 and your professor mentions an idea,

8:21 and then you see the same idea in the book you're reading,

8:25 it's probably an important idea that you should remember.

8:28 So, if you notice the professor has said something,

8:32 the book says the same thing,

8:34 that probably is important to remember, especially for a test.

8:40 You can also use the...

8:42 In some textbooks, there's a summary at the end of each chapter.

8:47 So, you can also use these summaries to help

8:49 you figure out if something's important or not.

8:52 So, I'm going to show you another book.

8:56 So, again, this was my physiology textbook,

9:01 and I don't know how well you can see it, but at the end of every chapter,

9:05 there is something called a chapter review or summary,

9:09 and it writes all the key ideas that you

9:12 should know that were important in the chapter.

9:16 So, sometimes reading this can really help you understand what's

9:20 important and to make sure you didn't miss anything that's important.

9:25 So, read carefully, read for the main ideas, and take notes while you read.

9:32 This is how you become an active reader.

9:35 If you're just reading without taking notes,

9:38 you're probably going to forget something.

9:41 The next step in the SQ3R method is recite.

9:47 So, this is done after you read.

9:52 And what do you do?

9:54 Well, imagine I've just finished the chapter, read everything,

9:59 now what I do is I close the book and I test myself.

10:03 So, I try to answer the questions I had from earlier.

10:08 Remember in the Q part, the question part,

10:11 we came up with some questions based off of the headings and subheadings?

10:15 Now I'm going to ask myself some questions.

10:18 What did I just read?

10:20 What were some new words that I learned?

10:22 What does, you know, earlier I mentioned the fun trio from that one book,

10:27 what does the fun trio mean again?

10:29 So, I might ask myself questions based off of what I learned.

10:35 And I can try to ask other questions.

10:39 So, what did I learn?

10:41 What new words did I learn?

10:43 What were some of the key findings or key points that I just read about?

10:48 And I should quiz myself.

10:50 Okay, I learned the word fun trio.

10:54 What is fun trio?

10:55 Let me think.

10:57 Oh, okay, I remember what the fun trio is, just as an example.

11:01 I actually read that book a long,

11:03 long time ago and I don't remember anything about this fun trio.

11:07 It's just an example.

11:09 The last R in the SQ3R method stands for review.

11:15 It's what you do after reading.

11:19 It's the last thing you do, which is you review your notes.

11:23 Remember I mentioned you can write on sticky pads or even

11:27 in the book or on a separate piece of paper.

11:31 Review the notes that you wrote while you were reading the text.

11:35 You can review the sections or sections that you've read.

11:42 You can ask yourself, did I understand the main idea?

11:46 Did I understand the key details?

11:49 If you're still confused,

11:50 you can go back and reread the parts that are confusing.

11:55 Another thing I would recommend is think about it.

11:58 Can you explain this information to someone else?

12:01 You can even try.

12:03 If you had to sum up the chapter you just read,

12:08 how would you explain it to somebody?

12:11 These are great ways to actively read.

12:14 And remember, when you are actively reading, you remember way more.

12:19 And even though it feels like this is a lot of work,

12:24 when it's time for exams or tests,

12:27 I promise you will actually have saved yourself some time.

12:33 And you'll remember this information for years and years to come.

12:37 So, it's actually a really good idea,

12:40 if you want to learn something, to use this method.

12:43 And again, when I first started university, I did this.

12:48 I highlighted everything.

12:50 By the end, I actually was using this method.

12:53 And I found this method has been so

12:56 helpful that even though I'm out of university, I use this in everyday reading.

13:02 Whenever I have to read something difficult, this is how I do it.

13:06 Or if I want to read something and remember it, this is how I do it.

13:11 So, thank you so much for watching today.

13:14 Practice makes perfect.

13:15 So, if you want to practice what you learned here today,

13:19 you can visit our website at www.EngVid.com.

13:22 And you can take a quiz to review the concepts in the SQ3R method.

13:29 So, you can also check out my YouTube channel.

13:33 We have a lot of different information

13:36 and a lot of different videos on different learning strategies,

13:39 on tips about reading, writing, and so much more.

13:44 So, thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take care.