Stratergy to read TextBooks

A Strategy for Reading Textbooks

Ever heard of SQRW? Well it might sound sort of complex but its actually quite simple and straight forward. SQRW is a four-step strategy for reading and taking notes from textbooks that will help you better prepare for exams, better prepare for class discussion, improve your reading comprehension and help you learn better using textbooks. SQRW stands for Survey, Question, Read and Write.

Survey

The first step in the SQRW reading strategy is Survey. Before you actually start reading a chapter you first survey the chapter. You read the chapter title, introduction, headings and the summary or conclusion at the end of the chapter. When you survey you should also review any pictures, graphs, maps, or tables in the chapter and the caption (text explanation that goes with each). The purpose of surveying the chapter is to quickly learn what the chapter is about before reading it in its entirety.

Question

The second step in the SQRW reading strategy is to ask questions as your read. Questions help you to focus and give your reading purpose. Instead of simply reading without purpose now you are searching for useful, applicable information. Use each chapter heading to develop questions for that chapter. For example, for chapter titled “Housing Training Dogs” you might develop the question “How many ways are there to house train a dog?” or “What is involved in house training a dog?” If a chapter heading contains several ideas you may want to form a question for each idea. Always remember to use the chapter headings to develop questions – don’t use the conclusion, summary, introduction or the text to develop your questions.

Read

The R in the SQRW stands for Read and represents the third step in the SQRW reading strategy. Once you’ve surveyed the chapter and developed questions based on the chapter titles you should then read the information contained in the chapter to answer the questions you developed. As you read the chapter in an attempt to answer the questions you developed you may find it necessary to modify your question(s) or you may think of more questions that need to be answered. Make sure to focus as you read and take time to thoroughly answer each question you develop.

Write

The final step in the SQRW reading strategy for reading textbooks is Write. Make sure to write each of the questions you form along with its answer in a notebook. After you’ve written down each question as well as the answer to each question review each question again to make sure you have completely answered the question.

As you begin to apply the SQRW strategy you’ll find that learning will become easier, you’ll develop better notes to prepare for class discussion and exams, and ultimately you’ll learn much more.