How do you read a difficult text?

chelios

I have to read a rather difficult text for uni, but i just dont understand what its saying and find myself getting bored, however its essential that i read and understand what its trying to say, does anyone have any tips/strategies to help me with this?

thanks in advance

anonymous

One sentence at a time...just like you would if you wanted to read for fun. There is also dictionary.com to help you with difficult words. Its for free too. Make notes. Go online for better explanations. That's what I did with my biology textbook, I would go online and find better explanations. Sometimes textbooks aren't written well. The author doesn't know how to make things understandable so you have to read other books or go to websites and see if you can find better explanations and if all else fails maybe you should get tutored in the subject.

m-m

I would go through it in small chunks or sentences and rewrite the important parts in my own words. This leaves you with all the important parts rewritten in the same order they appear, and should be understandable.

Also, if it's a journal article, there may be a review or something of it that would summarise it in an easier to understand way. If one exists for what you're reading then you could read that before going back to the original article.

If you tell us what it is, and it happens to be in my subject area, I could have a look.