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Reading Skills: Strategies for Reading Difficult Passages

Have you ever had the experience of reading along, feeling comfortable, "getting" the idea, and then suddenly, you find that you are completely lost? Or, have you ever had the feeling that you just can't get started on a difficult reading assignment? Here are some suggestions for approaching paragraphs, sections, or whole essays that just seem "too hard."

• First, remember that this reading assignment is not too hard for you. You're in college! You're intelligent! You can do this! You just need to work at it, and believe that practice will make the difference between feeling at sea, and feeling confident.

• Find the place in the text where you start to get confused. Summarize the ideas up to that point, and jot them down.
  
• Then start working slowly and methodically through the "too hard" section. Read just one sentence, or a few sentences that seem to go together. SLOW DOWN until you get a stronger grasp on this section of the reading. This is called closereading, and you will have to do it for every paper you write, no matter how good you get at reading. It’s a part of college-level scholarship in any field.
  
• Identify the problematic words and phrases. (HINT: these might be words and phrases that you skipped over the first time you read, or that you are tempted to skip over now.) If they are simply words that you don't know, look them up in your college-level dictionary, then compare the dictionary definitions to the original context to see if you can make sense. This might solve your "too hard" problem, but if not, move on to looking at the relationships between ideas in the passage.
  
• Look for words or symbols that show relationships between ideas. For example, the word "because" in the middle of the sentence indicates that something causes something else; if there is a "because," ask yourself what is causing what. Here are a few more examples of words or symbols that show relationships between ideas: "furthermore" shows that one idea builds on the previous idea; "but" or "however" shows that one part of an idea seems to contradict another part of the idea; a colon indicates additional information to explain what came before the colon. Look for other words that show relationships, and start a list in the back of your notebook. Keep adding to the list, and then you'll have a good starting place next time you get stuck in a reading assignment.
  
• Look for language that reveals the writer's stance toward an idea. Does the writer quote or refer to another writer? Is the writer explaining someone else's idea, or advancing her or his own idea? Does the writer approve of the idea under discussion? Is the writer recommending any action?
  
• After you have closeread the passage, several times, return to the parts of the essay that you do understand. Look for passages that seem related to the difficult passage, and see if you can make some connections between the passages you understand, and the one that's giving you trouble.
  
• WRITE, WRITE, WRITE! The more confusing a passage is, the more you should write about it. Try to figure out why it’s confusing. Write questions. Write explanations of what you think the passage might be saying. Often, when we can't understand something we're reading, we can write our way to a successful understanding.
  
• TALK, TALK, TALK! Talk out loud to yourself, as if you are the writer, explaining the passage. Talk out loud to yourself, asking questions about the passage and answering them. Talk to your roommate or a friend—explain why the passage is so hard for you, and see if "talking it out" with a friendly listener leads you to a better understanding. Talk to someone else in your class, who might be struggling with the same passage—between the two of you, you might be able to work it out better.
  
• DON'T GIVE UP! The main reason that most people don't understand a reading assignment is that they give up when it gets difficult. Keep working until you feel you are making progress. Trust me: with hard work, you will not only feel like you are making progress, you will make progress.