Reading is one of the most important learning activities at university that you can engage in.
Reading gives you access to the knowledge and language of a field and therefore provides a
foundation for participating in classes and performing well in assessments.
Choose what to read
If you’re reading to understand a topic, start with core and recommended readings in the
subject. These are often comprehensive works in the field that explain the key concepts or
issues. You can also search for current research on the topic using the Library website to
keep yourself updated on the latest developments. Try using Library Guides for a tailored
list of sources for a subject. Another idea is to ask your lecturer for recommendations of
texts on a topic. If you have problems understanding key concepts in a subject, you may
need to go back to a more basic textbook which explains them at a more fundamental level.
If you are reading to address an assessment task, use the key words from the task to search
for relevant sources. Most tasks would ask for some connection to key concepts discussed in
the subject, and so it’s important to use core or recommended readings alongside your own
research. While theoretical readings can be a bit older, empirical papers, those that report
on research findings, are considered recent if their dates of publication fall within the last
ten years.
Preview a text
With any text, you will benefit from first previewing its key information to quickly grasp
what it is about overall. Try spending around five minutes reading through the title, abstract
(if there is one), the introduction and conclusion and any headings or table of contents. For
general understanding of a subject, ask yourself:
What question(s) do I want to answer by reading this text?
Does this text contain new and useful information on my topic of interest?
When reading for an assignment, think about how the text is related to the task:
Can this text help me answer the assignment question in any way?
If yes, what part of my answer plan does it seem to fit?
Previewing a text helps you to evaluate not only the relevance of a text to your purpose but
also its credibility. A text may appear highly relevant to an assignment but may present
obvious language problems, biases and inconsistencies. In this case, you may want to forgo
engaging with the text if you can, since reading time is precious, and you may have many
texts competing for your attention.
Use different ways of reading
You can read different texts, and even different sections of the same text, differently. How
you read should depend on what you want to get out of that reading.
Connect multiple readings
A typical challenge with reading at university is you usually need to read not only long and
highly specialised texts but also many such texts in a limited time. You may be reading

multiple sources to understand different views on a topic or to gather information for an
assignment.
Apart from the above reading and note-taking strategies, you also need to make
connections between texts and compare them to gain big-picture ideas such as similar and
different findings on the same topic. This allows you to make moderate, informed
generalisations about what you read.
As you read a text, think beyond the text itself to relate it to other readings. Take notes of
any links you’ve identified across different texts in your assignment plan or study map. You
can use these links to know how to put together notes from individual readings. For
example, you might want to summarise a common finding from three different sources to
support your argument or juxtapose two contradictory findings to highlight a problem. Here
are some questions to help you navigate multiple readings on the same topic:
What key messages are emerging from these readings?
What aspects of the topic do they relate to?
What are the similarities and differences between these messages?
Which messages have the strongest supporting evidence?
Based on these observations, what is my view on the topic?
Try jotting down your answers to these questions while reading different sources and come
back to revise them often as you continue reading. This will help you to keep sight of the big
picture of your topic.