1.

To give students practice using context, assign them some or all of the online exercises for Words Matter.

2.

Get a book such as The New York Times Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused and Mispronounced Words. Write some uncommon words on slips of paper, one word per slip, e.g. "malocclusion" (loosely translated "bad bite" and perfect for word analysis), "raptorial" (adapted to seizing prey), and "sillabub" (a sweet drink made of milk and liquor). Tell your students to create a sentence with enough clues in it to make an approximate definition of the words possible. Read the words aloud and see how many of the definitions students can guess based on the context clues provided by their classmates. If you can take the time, you might want to give students four or five words to create sentences for. For each word that their classmates guess correctly, students get a point added to their lowest quiz grade.

3.

The debate continues as to whether or not the more-than-half-century old study technique SQ3R is (or is not) too rigid to meet the needs of student readers. All I know is that every "new," supposedly better and more flexible version still seems to be modeled on Robinson's original creation. While I myself might quibble over the power of surveying to improve comprehension, I think encouraging students to read with a purpose, annotate pages, recite at the end of chapter sections, and review upon completion of the entire chapter are invaluable pieces of advice that can be conveyed quickly and coherently by teaching SQ3R. Just make sure to tell students that SQ3R was designed to be a flexible study tool. The length and depth of the survey, for instance, depends on the material and the reading purpose. Similarly, the kinds of graphic aids they survey will depend on what's offered by the textbook.

4.

People who do a lot of reading often have their own little rituals. For some it's Post-It notes or highlighting pages; for others, it's underlining and writing in the margins. When used selectively, all of these study habits enhance both comprehension and concentration, so students should be encouraged to develop their own rituals.

One way to do this is to ask your colleagues what they do when they want to master new material. Make a list of their techniques, add your own, and distribute the list to students. Then tell them they need to use different techniques to figure out which ones they consider most effective. Use a questionnaire to get them actively thinking about study strategies.

5.

To make students more aware of what their textbooks do to highlight important information, you might also want to distribute the textbook analysis questionnaire.

6.

Students are often surprised to discover that some habits, unlike smoking or eating junk food, are good for you. Tell them to get into the good habit of studying at the same time and in the same place. Dedicating a particular place and time to studying will make it easier for them to get their work done. If they associate a time and place with studying, they are more likely to get right to work once their regular study time arrives and they enter the designated area. Similarly, when it comes time to study, tell students to team up with someone who is motivated to get good grades.

7.

When you get to the section on test taking, encourage students to take notes as a way of reviewing a completed assignment and preparing for future exams. While everyone has their own preferred method, I favor the following. After completing an assignment, students should use the chapter headings to make a skeleton outline. Then, without looking back, they should test both their comprehension and memory by seeing how much information they can jot in pencil underneath those headings while leaving lots of space between each point. The inability to jot more than one sentence under each heading is a definite signal that they need to read the material a second time.

The next night, they should check their notes while skimming the actual text and make the original outline more detailed by erasing the old notes and penning in the new. Over time, they should work on reducing the sentences in their notes to brief phrases. These should function as stimulus cues, i.e. each time students look at a phrase, they should be able to call up the entire idea associated with it. This method makes good use of two principles of remembering: 1) Reviewing right after learning new information slows down the rate of forgetting, and 2) repeated reviews encourage long-term remembering.

8.

I don't think you can tell students often enough 1) to read in chunks: If they have twenty-five pages assigned, they should try to read twelve pages in one night and thirteen in another; and 2) to quit while they are ahead. If they stop reading while trying to master a passage that won't quite give up its meaning, chances are good they won't want to return to the assignment the next night. A better idea is to finish on a high note and quit with a sense of accomplishment, even if that means stopping at eleven pages rather than twelve.

9.

Have your students use a search engine to "google" various study skills topics such as outlining, SQ34, or paraphrasing. There is an amazing amount of very good material on the web that they can print out and use to improve their study habits. They can also start with the URLs on the inside cover of Reading for Thinking if they wish.

10.

I don't think there is a reading study in existence that doesn't support the importance of background knowledge to comprehension. Unfortunately, many college students don't have the kind of background knowledge that would help them with textbooks. Tell them that the web is a great way to fill in the gaps. For instance, if they are about to read a chapter on Thomas Hobbes and his theory of government as expounded in Leviathan, tell them to type Hobbes's name into a search engine and then read through some of the encyclopedic entries that come up in response to his name. You might also want to give them the handout on getting information from the web.