Prereading
Read the title. This usually identifies the topic or subject under discussion. Titles can help you predict what direction the chapter will take. For example, upon seeing "People and Motivation" in a business text, you might predict that the author is going to define motivation and/or explain what managers do to encourage a high degree of motivation among employees. This is IMPORTANT because your first tentative predictions create an immediate purpose: you are reading to confirm, modify or contradict your first guess about the chapter's contents. This focuses your reading.
Raise questions about the chapter. In the absence or in addition to author questions, make up your own. For example, A chapter entitled "Theories of Mate Selection might cause you to ask "what are they", "how many are there", "what distinguishes them?" Use who, what, when, how questions.
Study the visual aids. Pictures, charts, boxes, graphs and captions. This is a good way to get advance information.
Read any concluding sections. Summary, review, questions, key terms, exercises.
Outline the chapter's contents.
Consider what you already know about the topic.
Prereading gives you mental flexibility. Once you know what the author wants you to understand, you can make informed decisions about what is essential information and what is not. You can then decide what is essential information and what is not. You can then decide which portion of the chapter requires close and careful reading and which portions can be read at a normal rate.
Prereading also gives you help to divide the chapter into manageable units of study. Through prereading you can identify the natural divisions of the chapter's structure. Then based on these divisions, you can divide the chapter into manageable portions. Outline.
Prereading Involves the Following Steps
Have a purpose which guides your reading. For example, what do you expect to learn in "Mechanics of Heredity?" (Who, what, why, how, when questions.) Read to answer your questions.
"There is an implied contract between author and reader."
- Wordsworth
