Lesson 9: Active Reading Strategies
Introduction
Developing an effective reading strategy can help you to improve your reading
comprehension and retention, as well as your ability to think critically about what you read.
What is an effective reading strategy? Your answer will probably depend on what it is you
want to accomplish, what type of material you are reading, and your preferences as a
learner. You will find, however, that the key ingredient is being active, rather than passive.
Keep in mind that there are many different ideas about what works best. Do not get
frustrated if the methods slow you down at first: slowing down is part of learning how to do
something differently. Have fun with the strategies described in this unit and test them out.
These are tools for you to use whenever you need them.
Journaling Opportunity
Take a few minutes to think about what you would like to improve about your
reading effectiveness and what you like about how you read. How would you
describe an effective reader?
Learning Objectives
After completing Lesson 9, you should be able to
1. explain the difference between active reading and passive reading.
2. use muscle reading techniques.
3. mark up your texts effectively.
4. use strategies for building your vocabulary and dealing with difficult reading
assignments.
5. apply active reading strategies to reading research materials.
Study Activities
Mandatory Activities

Read the online lesson notes and complete the learning activities.

In Becoming a Master Student, read Chapter 4: Reading, pages 134-162.
As you read through the chapter, you do not need to complete all of the activities and
exercises described. The Learning Activities page at the end of the lesson lists the activities
you are required to complete.
Optional Activities

Nielsen, J. (2007). Get the most from your textbook.
AthabascaUniversity.
Counselling Services.

Complete whatever activities you wish to in MindTap “Chapter 4: Reading” to assist with
reflecting, reviewing, and applying concepts from your textbook.
Lesson Notes
Note 1: Getting Away From Passive Reading
Written texts come in many forms such as poems, newspapers, novels, and journal articles.
As a university student, you will find that your textbooks are one of the types of texts that
you work with the most. Reading a textbook is very different from reading for pleasure (but
can still be enjoyable!). As Nielsen (2014) writes: “In pleasure reading, following the author's
thread is much of the enchantment. In knowledge reading, you need a clear notion of where
you are going, why, and by what means” (Overview section, para. 2).
Remember the textbook reconnaissance that you did as part of the learning activities for Unit
1, Lesson 1? Surveying a textbook before reading any of the chapters can help you gain an
important understanding of the “where, why, and by what means.” Be sure to have a look at
the title, information about the author, the table of contents, the introduction, chapter
headings and the index. This process can be adapted to a variety of reading materials.
You may already have a reading style that you are comfortable with, but chances are there
are strategies that you could use to make your reading more active. An active reader brings
curiosity to reading, and makes connections between the ideas in the text and previous
knowledge. A passive reader tends to not work with the information he or she reads, but
instead waits for the author to make the connections between ideas (Nilsson, 1999, p. 2).
There are many ways to develop your active reading abilities.
Muscle reading. There are different strategies for improving active reading. Your
textbook introduces a reading strategy called “muscle reading,” a nine-step approach (pp.
136-140). Try muscle reading with your course texts or any other textbooks you have. It is
important to find reading strategies that work best for you rather than to rigidly follow a
model, so feel free to adapt muscle reading to your own needs. Your textbook also offers a
shortened version of muscle reading that you might find helpful (p. 141) and strategies for
reading e-books actively (p. 141).
Marking up. Remember how Becoming a Master Student invited you to “Rewrite this
book” (p. 9)? A key way to get active with your books is to mark them up (of course you
should only do this with books you own). Try not to underline or highlight too much or too
little. Marking up less than 10% of a text should be enough to capture the important points.
The idea is to make important information stand out. If you clutter your text, when you
review you will find yourself re-reading almost the whole text and not making the best use of
your study time.
Use the margins to jot down summaries of long sentences. Circle words you do not
understand, create categories, and use notes like “re-read” or “good test items.” Use
notations such as “def” for definitions or an asterisk for important parts.
Reviewing. This is one of the most important active reading strategies, and often the
most neglected. You should review daily and weekly.
Daily reviews: before each study session, take out your notes or your text and review for
20 minutes.
Weekly reviews: once a week, set aside an hour of review time (per course) to read and
recite your notes and the highlighted sections of your text.
Reflecting.
When you read actively, you don’t just read, you think! You should reflect
throughout the reading process. Determine what is important. What do you need to know
for the examination? What is significant for your own learning and development? What
inspires you? What makes you curious to learn more?
Take a big picture approach in making connections between the author's points and
conclusions. Think about the associations you can draw between the material and what you
already know or want to know. Consider how you can relate the material to real life
examples. Think about how you might be able to apply or act on what you have learned.
Approach texts from a critical perspective. Texts are part of an ongoing conversation, and
authors have beliefs, values, and ideas that influence how they approach problems. You
have an opportunity to join this conversation. If the material is controversial or about
something that you care deeply about, you may need to focus in your first reading of the
text on allowing the author to be heard. If the material is difficult, your first reading may be
focused on reading to understand before you can respond.
Reading strategies, such as muscle reading, can help with comprehension, but there may be
times when there are specific obstacles to your understanding. If it is a question of not
understanding the meaning of words, having a dictionary nearby will help. There may be
times, however, when you continue to have difficulty with the ideas in the text. This may be
because the text assumes a previous knowledge you do not have, or perhaps the
arguments are difficult or unclear, or maybe the author is saying something that you just
do not connect with. In such cases, you may want to discuss the material with your tutor or
academic expert. You can also use the strategies in your textbook for “expanding your
vocabulary” (p. 143) and for “when reading is tough” (pp. 144-145).
Note 2: Reading Research Materials
When you read textbooks, you usually have to read them quite carefully because you are
trying to learn the content. When you read research material, on the other hand, you
usually begin by skimming the text for meaning and relevance. Then, if you decide to use
a source, you need to carefully re-read it using the active reading strategies covered in this
unit.
Journal Articles
University students are frequently expected to read materials other than course textbooks.
One form of reading material that you can expect to work with in many of your courses
(including this course) is the journal article. You learned about journal articles in Lesson 5.
You can apply the active reading strategies that work for you to reading journal articles.
As you have seen in this course, academic journals are used to share and discuss scholarly
theories, arguments, interpretations, and findings. Unlike a textbook, which is typically
written with a student audience in mind, journal articles can be difficult to read because
they tend to be written for other specialists and academics in the discipline or in related
fields of study. In addition, your use of journal articles will probably be quite different from
your use of a textbook. You usually do not need to study a journal article; you use
arguments or findings in a journal article to support your thesis, or to acknowledge differing
perspectives. Here are some strategies for actively reading journal articles (adapted from
the SQ5R Study Method, Dehart, n.d.).

Survey: Scan the title, abstract, information about the author, headings,
introduction, conclusion, and references to acquire an overview of what you can expect
from the article. This can help you decide whether the article is of interest to you or if
it is even relevant to your research.
 Question: Based on your survey, start asking how you might be able to use the
article.
Can you use it to support your argument or to provide a different perspective? If it is
not especially relevant to your present paper, is it something you might want to save
foryour own interest or for another purpose?

Read: Once you have decided that you might want to use an article you have been
surveying, read the article actively and with your research question in mind. Look first
for the author’s thesis. Then, consider how the author supports the thesis. Finally,
study the conclusions the author draws in relation to the thesis. Consider the author’s
methodology (how does he or she go about seeking answers?). Examine any charts or
graphs.
If something strikes you as important, unusual, confusing, or especially helpful, jot
a note in the margin, or underline or highlight it. If the article is challenging, you
may need to look up terms or indicate sections that require further research.
Sometimes
after you read more on an issue, a particular article or concept can become clearer.
Give yourself some time away from the article before re-reading. You may find yourself
returning to your collection of articles again and again as you research, because
research is often about looking for the big picture. After you’ve read another article
on the issue, compare the articles.

Record: Make sure you record all bibliographic information for the article (see p. 182
of your textbook) and where you found it. You can take notes right away or wait until
you have read other articles. We will cover strategies for taking effective research notes
in Lesson 10. When you take notes from sources to use in an essay, you need to take
special care to ensure that you keep track of what words and ideas are yours and what
words and ideas belong to someone else. Failure to do so could result in plagiarism,
which is a serious academic offense. You will learn more about this in Lesson
12: Intellectual Honesty.
Reflect: Try to continually reflect on what you are reading, evaluating what the
author is saying in relation to your own ideas and those of other authors. Use critical
thinking skills to evaluate articles. Critically reflect on issues such as who has funded
the research and what assumptions lie behind questions the researcher is asking.
Consider how the perspective is similar to or differs from other perspectives on the
issue.
Books

To make the most use of your research time, be selective in what you read. You will
probably find more material on your research question than you could ever possibly hope to
read. You can follow a strategy with books that is similar to the strategy for reading journal
articles. Surveying is essential because a book that you use in your research may only have
a chapter or section that is relevant for your purposes. Consider title, facts of publication,
and authorship. Have a look at the table of contents, the index, and the references. Read
the introduction, as this is where authors let readers know their thesis, perspective, and
framework for considering issues. This can help you reflect not only on the usefulness of a
book, but also to think critically about how the book compares to your thinking and to what
other authors have written about the issues. The author’s conclusion can also help you
develop this understanding.
Authors often provide a summary of the contents of their chapters as part of the
introduction or in a preface to the book; you might not need to read every chapter. Quickly
skim chapters, paying particular attention to introductory and concluding paragraphs and to
major and minor headings. When you find material that looks relevant, slow down your
pace and read carefully and critically. Something that you need to be especially careful to
avoid is quoting an author’s words, or using their ideas, out of context. As a responsible
scholar, you are expected to accurately convey the ideas and positions of authors that you
incorporate into your papers. Post-it
Notes work quite nicely in marking passages that you
want to return to for rereading or note-taking.
Learning Activities
Complete the following activities in your textbook:
a. Journal Entry 11, Discover What You Want From This Chapter, page 135
b. Journal Entry 12, Experimenting With Muscle Reading, page 142
c. Exercise 16, Relax, page 144
d. Skills Snapshot, page 160
Complete the following activities in MindTap:

Select “Chapter 4: Reading,” then select “Engagement Activity: Master Students in
Action: Reading.” After watching the video, reflect on some of your own reading habits
and practices in the learning journal you are keeping for this course.

Select “Chapter 4: Reading,” then select Aplia Homework, and then complete the "Three
phases of Muscle Reading” and “Extend Muscle Reading to web pages and ebooks”
activities.
Try out muscle reading on a section of one of your textbooks. What do you find works
well or not so well for you? What aspects do you think you will use most in your future
reading assignments and why? Record your observations in the learning journal you are
keeping for this course.
Assessment Reminders
At the end of Unit 4, there will be an online unit quiz to help you assess your
understanding of the material from Lessons 9 and 10. The online quizzes add up to 9% of
your mark for the course and you must complete them in order to pass the course. The
quizzes are not timed.
There is also a discussion topic at the end of this unit. Eleven percent of your final grade
for the course will be awarded on the quality and quantity of your discussion board
contributions (you must participate in three of six discussion topics).