Read
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
Joseph Addison
The benefits of reading
Exploring strategies for reading texts actively will boost your ability to understand and interpret information you come across at university or at work.
This page provides some general support on reading strategies. For more help reach out to Study Support.
Different ways to read
We read differently depending on what we are reading and why we are reading. To read academic and educational texts efficiently you need to:
find the purpose for your reading
select texts or sections of text relevant for your purpose.
focus your reading on relevant texts and sections
read carefully to understand relevant information.
Reading with purpose
Before you start reading, it is important to think about your purpose for reading. Having a clear purpose or knowing why you are reading, what you are looking for and how you will use the information means you can be more focused, efficient, and effective with your reading. The purpose for a lot of your reading at university is to find information related to assessment tasks. Focusing on the wording in the task or the question will help you understand exactly what you are being asked to do. Which means you can do focused reading to find the specific information needed for that task.
Your Task
Watch this short video (3:51) on Analysing the question to get a stronger idea about what your assessment question is asking you to do. Then look at your own assessment question to see if you can identify the direction, content and limiting words.
Reading strategies to save time
Reading can be time consuming, which is why it’s helpful to learn different reading strategies to make it more manageable. By reading purposefully you can be strategic and selective about what you read. At times you need to read the whole text, but other times you may only need to read certain parts.
Relevant strategy for your need
Using different reading strategies helps you choose texts and locate sections of texts which are relevant to your task. Click on the plus (+) icons to learn what are different reading strategies, what do you use them for, and how to use them.
Tip
You can start by previewing a text to get a general idea of what it is about. If you can’t see anything that connects with your purpose for reading, then it’s likely this text isn’t relevant to your task and you can skip reading it.
Reading for your studies
Reading is an important part of your study and it allows you to understand the body of knowledge in your field. Reading will help you to build this knowledge over time. At uni you are often given a list of recommended readings, so start with these, as they usually include key concepts.
Completing your weekly readings before class helps you to develop discipline-specific vocabulary and have a better understanding of the topic. It also allows you to write down questions to ask about in class and to contribute more confidently to discussions.
Reviewing or re-reading texts after class allows you to read in a more informed and engaged way, after gaining a deeper understanding of the topic and concepts.
Difficult texts
Sometimes when reading at uni and in the workplace you may come across texts that are difficult to read.
Click on the icons below to see more tips that can help you.
Top Tech Tips
Using technology for reading
Some students find it easier to print out the text to read, others prefer to read on the screen. You can also use screen readers to listen to the text being read. There are a range of tools out there. Click on the links below to access the software and learn more about it.
- Microsoft Office 2019 or Office 365 have access to multiple tools for listening to Word documents. For instructions visit Listen to your Word documents.
- Read and Write – reading on-screen text aloud, checking written work
- Microsoft Translator – translate text, speech, documents, web pages and more
- NaturalReader – converts written text into spoken words
- Speechify app – takes a photo of text then reads it to you