Gaining an Overview of the Text

Before you begin reading the text, you can learn a lot about the material by skimming the pages. Its title, headings, learning objectives, images, sidebars, and questions often provide an overview of the material. Let’s look at an example from a short chapter in a textbook. The chapter is titled “Using and Understanding Media.” Once you understand the different elements of a chapter, you can use them to predict the chapter’s topics and content. Click the title of the chapter to open it. When you move your cursor over each section a highlight will appear. Click on the highlighted area to learn how the text element can help you preread a chapter.

The prereading strategy table that follows describes how to preread chapter elements like the ones found in the “Using and Understanding Media” example. It also describes how to preread article elements similar to the one you will soon read.

Prereading Strategies Table

Chapter and Article Elements	Questions to Ask Yourself	Your Prior Knowledge
Title and Teaser	What does the title tell me about the subject of this article? What does the teaser tell me about the article?	What do I already know about this subject?
Learning Objectives (for chapters)	What do the learning objectives tell me that my teacher and the book authors want me to learn from the chapter?	Which of the objectives do I already know?
Overview	What major points are conveyed in the overview?	What do I already know about this material?
Headings and Subheadings	What do the headings tell me about the chapter’s content?	What do I already know about the subjects introduced in each section?
Images, Graphs, and Captions	What do photos, diagrams, graphs, tables, and other visuals and their captions tell me about the chapter’s points?	What do the visuals remind me of?
Glossary, Bold Text, Italicized Text	What does bold text tell me about words and ideas that I will need to know?	What do I already know about these words?
Sidebars	What do sidebars and connecting articles tell me?	What do I already know about the subject of these sidebars?
Questions and Activities (for chapters)	What do the questions and activities tell me that the authors want me to learn in the chapter?	Can I answer any of these questions? Where can I find answers to the questions?

Source: “High Tech Co-ops: Changing Energy Realities”

Using this table will give you a head start when reading a chapter or an article. If you use the table and chapter elements to make predictions about what you read, you will learn and remember much more about the content.

Let’s use these strategies to browse “High Tech Co-ops: Changing Energy Realities,” a magazine article in the Texas Co-op Power magazine written by Carol Moczygemba. Without reading the whole article, see how much information you can derive using the questions pertaining to articles from the prereading strategies table above as a guide. Use your notes to write your responses. When you are finished, check your understanding.

Now that you’ve studied the article elements and thought about them, what topic do you predict this article will cover? Using your notes, write your response. When you are finished, check your understanding.