2. Circle and define any unfamiliar words or
phrases.
3. Record your reactions and questions in the
margins.
Highlighting or Underlining Key Ideas When you highlight or underline key words and ideas,
you are identifying the most important parts of the text.
There’s an important skill at work here: You can’t high-
light or underline everything, so you have to distinguish
between the facts and ideas that are most important
(major ideas) and those facts and ideas that are help-
ful but not so important (minor or supporting ideas).
Highlight only the major ideas, so you don’t end up
with a text that’s completely highlighted.
An effectively highlighted text will make for an
easy and fruitful review. When you jump back, you’ll be
quickly reminded of the ideas that are most important
to remember. Highlighting or underlining major points
as you read also allows you to retain more information
from the text.
Circling Unfamiliar Words One of the most important habits to develop is that of
circling and looking up unfamiliar words and phrases.
If possible, don’t sit down to read without a dictionary
by your side. It is not uncommon for the meaning of an
entire sentence to hinge on the meaning of a single
word or phrase, and if you don’t know what that word
or phrase means, you won’t understand the sentence.
Besides, this habit enables you to quickly and steadily
expand your vocabulary, so you’ll be a more confident
reader and speaker.
If you don’t have a dictionary readily available, try
to determine the meaning of the word as best you can
from its context—that is, the words and ideas around
it. (There’s more on this topic in Lesson 3.) Then, make
sure you look up the word as soon as possible so you’re
sure of its meaning.
– H O W T O U S E T H I S B O O K
