Throughout my years in school, I’ve always been instructed to read as much as I possibly can. I always struggled to find books that I would be interested in reading. I never enjoyed sitting down and reading, which doesn’t help me. Whenever I’m instructed to read a chapter out of a textbook for a certain class, I read what I’m required, but I never feel like I retain the information that I’m going through. This presentation today gave me a lot of helpful tools that I will use going forward in my college career. The five part reading system seems like a very effective way to go through material in a textbook. Prepare, preview, predict questions, process information and paraphrase and review, are the five steps in this system. Preparing yourself before you read a text is key, because if you don’t have the right mindset going into reading, you most likely will not retain the information. Previewing is also helpful because going through the text and understanding key words before you read is a very good way to approach a chapter before you read it. You won’t have to stop and figure out what a certain word means, if you go over it before hand, which allows for smooth reading. Predicting questions helps because if you’re asking questions throughout the text, which means that you are engaged in what you are reading and you will be able to retain information easier. Processing information is one of the key steps in this system because if you aren’t processing what you are reading, its like you never read the material in the first place. Paraphrasing and reviewing in my mind is the most important step because if you can paraphrase what you read, that means you retained the material that you read if you can reflect on the information and put it in your own words. If you don’t review what you read you probably won’t recall the information come test time. If I use this method while reading material for my classes I will retain the information a lot better. Throughout the presentation, I also learned a lot of effective reading strategies to use while reading. The beginning step is determining purpose, if you don’t know why you’re reading then you won’t truly understand the text. The next step is set reading goals, this is a helpful step because you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with unrealistic expectations before you start reading. Then the following step is concentrate, put yourself in an environment where you can focus and think without any distractions. After that you want to create an outline over the information that you are processing. If you can look over what you learned and you can review the information, you will be able to retain the material easier. Also writing down key word and concepts helps to see the bigger picture. If I can apply these strategies, I will be able to effectively read and actually retain information that I’m learning.