Read your college book fast

The first step in conducting your college reading is to find the thesis or argument. I know, it sounds boring or difficult but trust me, it will save you a ton of time. The thesis is the purpose for writing the paper, book, or article. If your do not immediately find this sentence, you will not understand the rest of the writing. This is the most important step.

While we were all taught in high school to put the thesis in the very beginning of our papers, this is not usually the case for college-level reading. The author usually begins the writing with some sort of "hook" or attention-getter. If you want to read your book fast, you should skip sections such as these and find the purpose of the writing.

Some key catch phrases when finding the thesis include "it is clear that..." , "I will prove" "one can see" followed by a list or one clear "fact" that the author will attempt to prove.

The thesis is meant to be obvious and must be the first thing you look for.

While the thesis is the main point of the reading, there must be individual arguments to support the thesis. Sometimes they are listed in the thesis sentence while other times they are seperate. Often, the chapters or sections of the writing are the the argument, how convenient.

For example: Fullproximity has the best hubs because his writing is useful, entertaining, and knowledgable.

The thesis is that fullproximity has the best hubs. The arguments are listed after.

Simple, huh?

Yet you would not believe how many people read the entire book and have no idea what the author is trying to say. They have wasted hours suffering over every word, yet they forgot to find the reason behind the writing.

Guess what? Most individual chapters are broken down the same way as the entire book is. There is the thesis, the arguments, and then evidence. You already know the thesis of the chapter because it is the argument you just looked at. ie Fullproximity's writing is useful.

Now, find the sub-arguments just as you did before. They will be easy to find once you skim over that flower language in the beginning of the chapter.

Most college readings involve a paper, project, or atleast a class discussion. When completing your assignment mention your specific example you actually read about, but MOST IMPORTANTLY how it fits into the author's argument or thesis. College professors love this kind of stuff, and they will not know or care that you did not read every word of that $165 book that you will sell back for $8.50.

Work smart, not hard

Many people do not believe me that this technique works, but it does. In 45 minutes I was able to "read" approximately 40 pages of text and write two pages on its meaning for a 400 level class. I am not a fast reader and do not pretend to be some sort of genius. the method works.

All you are doing here is unwriting the book. When you write a paper, you make an outline of how the writing will unfold. All you are doing here is pulling the outline from the paper and finding out what the whole thing is really about.