As you read chapters of this text, remember that reading is an active process—so stay focused. The meaning will only become clear as you work at it. The author has intentionally written an organized textbook and wants you to be able to follow along, so take advantage of the clues he’s provided, especially titles and headings.

Active readers use four skills to understand texts: questioning, clarifying, summarizing, and predicting. These steps don’t have to happen in a particular order. In fact, once you become comfortable with them, they’ll pop up on their own in whatever order they choose, perhaps several at the same time—that’s when you know that they’ve truly become habits of mind. Use these skills along with note-taking to get the most out of your reading.

Questioning

Historians look at the world in a particular way, and they usually organize their writing around the historical thinking skills discussed above: cause and effect, comparison, interpretation, etc. By questioning you can identify these patterns. Your textbook provides you with a series of marginal questions that help you to identify what is going on in the narrative. In addition to the “Seeking the Main Point” question that opens each chapter, each chapter also contains at least one “Summing Up So Far” question that helps you put together all that you’ve read to that point in the chapter. For example, take a look at the two questions on page 80. One asks you how the emergence of civilizations was revolutionary and refers to the section that you just read. The other, a “comparison” question, helps prepare you for reading the next section on Mesopotamia and Egypt.

For every section you read, you want to find out the major subject. The easiest way to do this is to ask the “reporter questions”: Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Clarifying

As you read, ask yourself if there are any words you don’t understand. If they’re crucial for making sense of the passage, can you define them using a dictionary or other outside source? If there are any sentences you don’t understand, do they become clearer when you reread them or as you read further in the text?

When it comes to vocabulary, use good judgment. Is the word crucial for understanding the passage? If not, read right past it. If it is a crucial word, you may need to look it up in a dictionary. Before you take the time to look it up, however, check that it hasn’t been defined already for you in the text.

When a longer passage throws you off, usually clearing up difficult vocabulary will help make the passage clearer. If it doesn’t, simply reread the sentence slowly for a few times. If you’re still unclear, back up—usually to the beginning of the paragraph—and try again. The most common way skilled readers get clarification is by rereading.

Summarizing

A summary is a brief review of the “big picture” of a particular section or chapter. After reading, briefly explain what each section is about in one sentence. Return to your questions, and be sure to look at the “Big Picture” questions in the “Second Thoughts” section at the end of the chapter narrative. They are designed to make sure that you understood the chapter.

Predicting

Based on your reading of an entire section or chapter, what do you think will come next in the text? How do you know? You may think predicting what’s coming next is a waste of time, but it’s a good test of how well you understand the flow of the text. If you’re in a car with your family going to visit your grandmother, you probably know the route to get there. If your mother takes an unanticipated turn, it alerts you that something is different from what you were expecting—and prompts you to ask why. So if your prediction based on reading is wildly off, it may alert you to the fact that your previous idea of the “big picture” of the section was off for some reason. You may need to back up and reread a section, or at least move forward more alert to where the author is going.

Note-Taking

Of course, simply reading the text is not sufficient. You’ll never remember everything that’s important unless you take notes. Students experience many pitfalls when taking notes. You should only write notes after you understand what you have read. Actively question, clarify, summarize, and predict in your head (or out loud) as you read each chapter; then, go back through the subsections and take brief notes representing the key ideas of that section.

Brief is generally better—don’t wear yourself out in the notes themselves. Find some consistent abbreviations for frequent words and use symbols. For example, an up arrow to indicate growth, a flat arrow to indicate cause/effect, and an “=” to indicate a definition, etc. Don’t write everything; ask yourself if a particular point is a main idea or just an example. If you own your textbook, make annotations in the margins. If not, get a stack of sticky notes and place them in the margins for your comments.