Advanced Reading Strategies
for College Success
StDev305, 2 credits
Strategy Workshop and Speeding Up Lab
Is this the class for you?
WHO
This course is for you if you:

sometimes feel overwhelmed by the reading demands of your college classes

feel you read too slowly to finish your assignments in a timely manner

find your mind wandering while you read

often feel unprepared for discussions and tests over the reading material

are determined to be an excellent reader in preparation for graduate school, professional school, or for life
This course is geared for the reading demands of upper-division and graduate level students, but we welcome dedicated
underclassmen, too.
WHAT
In this experiential, hands-on class, you will learn and practice strategies to make sense of your difficult texts, remember
better what you read, speed up your reading of academic texts, and learn critical and creative ways to process texts. The
focus is authentic practice of advanced reading strategies using your texts for other classes. Thus, while you are developing
the strategies, you are also completing your other reading assignments! With few exceptions, students who take this class
make significant progress in comprehension, reading rate, metacognitive awareness, and attitude towards college reading.
Homework load
1. You apply and adapt the strategies to read the texts for your other classes.
2. You report and reflect on the processes involved in that reading –takes about 5 to15 minutes a day.
3. You practice speeding up a half hour a day--using textbooks for your other classes or easier texts.
4. Before coming to class you read about the strategy in the handbook, watch a demonstration of it, and practice
the strategy on your own text. In class your understanding of the strategy is enhanced through discussion and
coached practice with your own texts.
Cost
1. Course handbook Learn More & Read Faster, about $25.
2. Course packet about $6.00.
3. Paperback text: Remember Everything You Read: The Evelyn Wood 7-day Speed Reading and Learning
Program by S. D. Frank, about $7.00.
4. ReadMate, a device that helps you speed up. You may buy it in the bookstore for about $75 new, $54 used, or,
you may check it out for four hours from the LRC in the HBLL.
why
This course helps you answer these essential questions and apply all the concepts to your own reading:
1. How can I speed up my reading while being sure I understand the important points intended by the author, by the
professor assigning the reading, and by the discourse community (participants in the conversations of that field)?
2. How do I adapt the reading strategies to the wide variety of difficult texts I have to read in college and under what
conditions, why, and how could I use or adapt each strategy?
3. What can I do to avoid undue stress about my reading assignments and instead enter the reading experience with
energy, engagement, and fascination?
4. What can I do to become a more scholarly, critical, and creative reader of difficult academic texts?
REGISTRATION INFORMATION,
Fall 2013
Section
DAYS
TIMES
PLACE
Instructor
Sect. 001
Sect. 002
Sect. 003
Sect. 004
MW
MW
TTh
TTh
7:00 a.m. –7:50 a.m.
3:00 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
8:00 a.m. – 8:50 a.m.
7:00 a.m. –7:50 a.m.
160 MCKB
166 MCKB
160 MCKB
160 MCKB
K. Plummer
I. Windham
S Julian
K. Plummer
If you really want to take the class and it is full, come the first day because several students usually drop. No auditing of the course is allowed.