1.

Stress that reading a multi-paragraph selection really is like reading a paragraph except that there is more information to process and—yes, here it is again—synthesize. However, creating those links between different pieces of information will come easier if students understand the relationship between the overall main idea and the ideas in individual paragraphs. In other words, they should not process a long reading as if it were a list. Their goal is to always figure out which idea, or, in the case of an entire chapter, ideas are the most important ones.

2.

While outlining (like mapping) is a good tool for making the relationships between separate points stand out, underlining and annotating before outlining can also help clarify relationships. Thus, unless the material is really easy to process, an outline should begin with underlining and annotating. Tell students to underline sentences as if they were paying for each word in a telegram and wanted to save money by underlining only what was essential to communicating their message. This should make them consider how important each word is to the point of the paragraph. And yes, underlining in this way will slow down their reading rate, but when the material is difficult and unfamiliar, that's not a bad thing. In fact, thinking carefully about which words carry the more important meanings can aid both memory and comprehension.

3.

As you start working more with longer selections, you might also want to talk a little bit about reading rate and how skillful readers adjust their reading rate to the material, speeding up or slowing down where appropriate. There is nothing wrong with reading difficult, technical material at a rate as slow as 100 words per minute. (You might mention too that skillful readers reread complicated sentences, slowing their rate down even more). Faster rates (300-500 words per minute) apply only to lighter fare such as magazine and newspaper articles.

4.

Overall, I am inclined to discourage students' passion for improving reading rate. Instead, I like to talk about skimming easy material at rates of 500 words per minute and scanning at rates as high as 1000 words per minute. But I'm more inclined to talk about the need to slow down and really parse complicated sentences and complex material. To diminish their ardor for improving reading rate, I'm fond of using a quote from Woody Allen: "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia." This quotation is also a good one to pave the way for a discussion of inferences because students can immediately answer the question, What is Allen implying about speed reading?

5.

Many students will, no matter how many times you tell them not to, obsess about the format of the outline, "If there is an a, don't I need a b too?" Keep telling them that their outline is their personal blueprint or floorplan of the text. Thus any format, symbol, or sentence structure that makes relationships between ideas clear is a good outline.