Improve your Reading/Studying Skills using the SQ3R Method

When I entered university, I did not know how to learn. The most important skill was never taught in any of the years leading up to university. In my first few years, I had attempted to learn from various friends and roommates about their strategies. One of those techniques entailed highlighting the important text with coloured highlight markers.

Source

As evident by this advertisement, one ends up highlighting all the text. Everything was important.

I didn't learn any of the techniques on how to learn until my third year of university. At that point, I stumbled across a reference to something called the "SQ3R" Method. This method turns a person from a passive reader to an active reader.

SQ3R stands for:

1. Survey
2. Question
3. Read
4. Recite
5. Review

Survey

When I would survey a chapter, I would start with the concluding paragraphs. They would give an abbreviated idea of what was contained within the chapter. In this excerpt from Principles of Microeconomics we see the outline of the entire chapter is laid out in point form. Before reading the chapter, we know what it is about.

Some textbooks have the chapter summary on the first page of the chapter. In the case of this text, the summary is found on the table of contents.

As you can see in this textbook, the items listed in the summary are the bolded headers in the text.

We can use these headers and any illustrations or graphs to compile questions.

Question

Creating and writing down questions from the bolded headers, illustrations, or graphs before reading the text changes you from being a passive reader to an active reader. For example, the first header "Micro" vs "Macro" Economics can lead to a number of questions.

• What is Microeconomics
• What is Macroeconomics
• What is the difference between the two

This focuses your mind to actively search for the answers when you actually start reading. This particular author is an exceptional textbook writer. In addition to the questions that you might entertain, he includes a series of questions that help solidify the subject matter in your mind.

Read

In my case, I would create a list of questions on the section that I was reading instead of doing so for the entire chapter. I would take a single question "What is Microeconomics?" and write the answer after I found it in the text "Microeconomics is concerned mainly ... " (I'll not write the entire quote here). Unlike sitting down and just reading through the chapter this is a laborious challenge. The only thing is that it will alter you from being an average student to an elite one.

Recite

At this stage, all of the information is stored as visual information. Transcribing your questions and answers to flashcards and then going through the cards speaking the words aloud creates new connections to the information. I have discussed using flashcards in previous posts. If you want me to elaborate further leave a comment down below. Recitation is an important step in setting up a pattern for recall.

Review

Psychologists characterize memory as being either Recall or Recognition. Do you recall going to kindergarten? Do you recognize the way to work? Recall has few and tenuous linkages to a specific memory. I can recall one event during the first day of going to kindergarten. I have thought about that event maybe half a dozen times in my life. I can recognize the letters in the alphabet because I have millions of times I have used them. Recall is a slow process and recognition is almost immediate. Reviewing flashcards daily increases the number of linkages that you have to a particular memory and when it is time to write the examination (usually multiple choice) recognition is the best memory strategy to work with.

Since I was in school there have been new techniques in learning including memory palaces and mind mapping. I would consider that the SQ3R Method is the starting place, and showed be taught to all students.