Orientation

Reading Skills and Strategies

Good reading skills are essential to your success in your college-level classes. Here are a couple of reasons why:

• In high school, you may have been able to get good grades without reading much of the text. Now that you're in college, professors will expect you to read the textbook and they may test you on information not discussed in class but covered in the reading. In fact, many professors test on assigned readings as a check to make sure students are using their texts.
• The average freshman is assigned over 250 pages of reading each week, so clearly you're going to need to keep up with your reading assignments. If you do not read during week one, that means that you will need to read 500 pages the next week—just to stay caught up! If you choose not to read during the second week either . . . well, you can see how the work can just snowball.