StDev305, Advanced Reading Strategies
for College Success
Not to be confused with StDev 214R “Surviving College Reading” which is especially designed for
underclassmen and others wanting essential strategies to help them survive their college reading.
Winter 2013, 2 credits
Strategy Workshop and Speeding Up Lab
Is this the class for you?
WHO
This course is designed mainly for upperclassmen in majors with heavy reading loads, for those wanting to prepare
for the reading demands of graduate and professional schools, for those who want to speed up their academic
reading, and for graduate students.
WHAT
You will learn and practice strategies to understand your difficult texts, remember better what you read, speed up your
reading of academic texts, develop intellectual prowess through higher order thinking, and approach reading with a critical
and creative mindset. Although the class will help you speed up your academic reading, it is not a speed reading class; so if
that is all you want, this course is not for you. However, an outside-of-class speeding up lab is offered weekly with three
sessions required. The focus is to give authentic practice of advanced reading strategies using your texts. Thus, while you
are developing the strategies, you are also completing reading assignments for your other classes.
This is a skills class so regular practice is required. Most students who attend, work hard during class, and
regularly practice the strategies when reading for their other classes make substantial progress in comprehending their
academic texts and in speeding up. This course helps you meet the aims of a BYU education especially these two: enlarge
your intellectual abilities and become a lifelong learner.
Homework load (1) You apply the strategies to reading 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 of your choice. (4) You learn about and try the strategy before class—
about 20 to 40 minutes per week.
Cost (1) A course handbook Learn More & Read Faster, about $29. (2) A course syllabus with reading logs, about $10.
(3) A paperback text: Remember Everything You Read: The Evelyn Wood 7-day Speed Reading and Learning Program by
S. D. Frank, about $7.00. (4) A ReadMate, a device that helps you speed up. You may buy it in the bookstore ($73.50 new
or about $55.00 used), may buy an app (if available) for certain smart phones (prices TBA), or, may check it out for three
hours from the Media Resource Center in the HBLL at no cost.
why
This course helps you answer these essential questions and apply all the concepts to your own reading:
1. What strategies can I use before I read, while I read, and after I read to actively construct meaning from difficult text,
remember the important information, think critically about it, and generate original insights?
2. 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)?
3. How do I adapt the reading strategies to the wide variety of texts I have to read in college and under what conditions,
why, and how could I use or adapt each strategy?
4. What can I do to enter the reading experience with energy, engagement, and fascination rather than with stress?
REGISTRATION INFORMATION, Winter 2013
Section
DAYS
TIMES
PLACE
Instructor
Sect. 002 (trad.)
MW
1:00-2:20 p.m.
382 BRMB
Richard Isakson, Ph.D.
Sect. 004 (FCM)
TTh
8:00-8:50 p.m.
160 MCKB
Suzanne Julian, MLS, MED.
Sect. 005 (FCM)
TTh
10:00-10:50 a.m.
283 MCKB
Marné Isakson, Ph.D.
Sect. 006 (FCM)
MW
3:00-3:50 a.m.
276 MCKB
Irene Windham, MSED
Sect. 008 (FCM)
MW
7:00-7:50 a.m.
160 MCKB
Kenneth Plummer, Ph.D.
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.