How to Study

1. Write definitions of any key terms you feel are essential to
understanding the topic. 
2. Write questions and answers you feel clarify the topic. 
3. Write any questions for which you don’t have answers—then
make sure you find them through rereading, further research,
or asking another student or your teacher.
4. Even if you still have unanswered questions, move on to the
next section and complete numbers one to three for that sec-
tion. (And so on, until your reading assignment is complete.)
The Challenge of Technical Texts
What about the unique challenges posed by highly technical texts—
physics, trigonometry, chemistry, calculus— you know, subjects that
three-fourths of all students avoid like the plague? These subjects
demand a logical, organized approach and a step-by-step reading
method. And they require a detection of the text’s organizational
devices.
Developing the skill to identify the basic sequence of the text will
enable you to follow the progression of thought, a progression that 
is vital to your comprehension and retention.
How to Study
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Why? In most technical writing, each concept is a like a building block
of understanding—if you don’t understand a particular section or 
concept, you won’t be able to understand the next section, either.
Most technical books are saturated with ideas, terms, formulas, and
theories. The chapters are dense with information, compressing a
great wealth of ideas into a small space. They demand to be read very
carefully.
In order to get as much as possible from such reading assignments,
you can take advantage of some devices to make sense of the organ-
ization. Here are five basics to watch for:
1. Definitions and terms.