Some challenges instructors face with students’ failure to read course material, or lack of deep reading, may either be related to students not perceiving a need to read, or to a lack of explicit skills in reading appropriate to the disciplinary content. Student motivation and strengths in reading, and reading effectively, may be improved through uses of strategies incorporated into course design.

Some Student Challenges with Reading

Surface reading has been sufficient so far: Students whose prior educational experiences have allowed them to earn satisfactory grades while skimming or skipping readings may not have the motivation or developed a sense of need to develop stronger reading practices in college. 

Deep reading takes time: Expert reading processes may involve slowly reading and rereading a text, and contextualizing the content by making connections with other information. Novices likely lack a depth of disciplinary understanding to make connections, and due to this knowledge gap, an initial struggle to comprehend the text may lead to frustration and resistance to spending time to develop and apply deep reading skills.

Don’t need to do the reading if content is covered in class: When instructors explain the assigned reading in class lecture, or if the exams only cover the material as covered during class, it can initiate a vicious cycle with students who already had a low motivation to read.

Failure to use strategies appropriate to the reading task: Different types of reading tasks require different reading processes, such as skimming for the main points, analyzing details, or situating the reading in a broader context. Students may be lacking awareness of different reading strategies, or may be challenged in choosing a strategy appropriate to the purpose of the reading.

Selected Strategies to Help Students Develop Active Reading Skills

Design your course to make reading time and effort worthwhile 

Communicate the reason for the reading: Consider the role that the reading assignments plays in your course. How do they contribute to students achieving learning objectives? Clarify for yourself and communicate to students the purpose of the readings and how they are used.

Give pre-reading prompts to help focus: Why are students reading? What’s a suggested approach or goal for this particular assignment? A reading goal could be to:

• get an overview, to gain familiarity
• be exposed to, or memorize facts and content 
• make connections, or apply to other information
• critique or question the author
• make an interpretation

Give students something to do with the reading (that requires doing the reading): For example:

• take a low-stakes quiz on content - reading quizzes can be useful as a preliminary content knowledge check before class; follow-up with in-class activity that requires students to think more conceptually and apply what they learned
• write a summary of main points
• interpret the purpose of the reading, and how text supports purpose 
• develop questions related to the text - put the questions to a purpose, such as using them in class discussion

Use activities that build on the readings: Are there question types that would require application of ideas in the text, such as posing a solution to a problem? These could be worked with in whole-class or small-group discussions, or as individual assignments.

Help students develop reading skills: Communicate that academic reading is a skill that requires development, and that the strategies you’re assigning or recommending are tools to help.

Explain your processes: Help students understand how you approach reading a text in your discipline. How do your reading purposes and processes vary with the type of text, such as primary sources, or scholarly articles? How do you use notes or annotations? How do you use your background knowledge when approaching a new reading? Are there other aspects of reading processes relevant to your course or discipline?

Create supports to difficult or unfamiliar texts: “Reading Guides” (Bean, 2011) help students navigate difficult or unfamiliar texts by providing support such as disciplinary term definitions, background information, context, and guiding questions to consider while reading. The guide can also include critical questions for students to respond to, encouraging them to reflect, apply ideas, or offer interpretations on the reading.

Use assignments that require interacting with texts: For example:

• Writing marginal notes that summarize, argue, question, make connections
• Developing annotations that make connections with other sources, or explore an idea in more depth
• Keeping an open-ended journal about their reading describing responses to the text, such as reactions, questions raised, analysis, argument, imitation, critique
• Responding to question prompts that require thoughtful consideration of the text, such as writing a summary, developing a supporting or opposing argument, or reacting to specific points

Self explanations: Self explanation is a reading strategy in which the reader generates their own explanations of a text, either by self reflection, writing notes, or by explaining the text information to another. This technique is especially effective for students with low-subject matter knowledge, or for learning facts from expository text. Poor readers may need to be taught self explanation techniques. 

Teach students “What it Says” and “What it Does”: This approach (Bean, 2011) teaches students to recognize the structural function in a text by writing “What it Says” and “What it Does” statements for each paragraph. Students use the text of what each paragraph ‘says,’ and identify what the paragraph ‘does,’ such as introduce a subject, situates the subject in a context, makes an argument, supports the argument with sources, acknowledges dissenting views or limitations, or presents conclusions.

Teach students how to read primary literature: Primary literature requires reading techniques different from students’ prior experience with reading textbooks. Students may need additional or more structured guidance in iterative reading, working with unfamiliar terms and concepts, contextualizing the text with other works, or gaining familiarity with the disciplinary processes of new knowledge creation.

References

Bean, John C. Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

Hodges, Linda C. Teaching Undergraduate Science: A Guide to Overcoming Obstacles to Student Learning. Stylus Publishing, Sterling, VA, 2015.