How to Outline College Textbook Readings

One of the best pieces of advice that I give my students is to outline their textbook readings for classes. The two primary reasons why I encourage this is because developing the outlines will help students in their understanding and retention of material in the text chapters and creating an outline will also provide a study guide for course exams. Here is a list of steps that will help students accomplish this activity.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Don't try and read a chapter in a short period of time. In order to retain information from textbooks, students are better served by reading a chapter over the course of several reading periods. To cram the reading of a chapter into one sitting, it will be difficult to understand and retain text let alone develop an outline.

2. Use chapter and section headings in the course text as headings for the outline. It helps to turn section headings into questions and then use the related text to answer the question. For example, a textbook section titled "Articles of Confederation" could be altered to an outline heading such as "What were the Articles of Confederation." After each heading, summarize the chapter text relevant to the answering of that question.

3. Have your professor look over our outline to ensure summaries are on point. This is an important step, which could significantly increase your understanding of text material. Ask professors if you interpreted the readings correctly. Ask professors if you missed anything in your summarizing of the text.