Before I entered college over 10 years ago, I participated in a 1-day seminar for incoming freshmen called Strategies for Success. The purpose of the seminar was to introduce you to study habits and prepare you for the college workload. What reminded me recently of this seminar was a book that I started reading: ‘Secrets of the Rockstar Programmers’. The book is a collection of interviews with top programmers. In the first chapter I came across a term that looked vaguely familiar: SQ3R. When I got to thinking about it, I recalled that it was during the Strategies for Success workshop that I originally heard about this.
What is SQ3R ?
SQ3R is an reading strategy, abbreviated: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. This technique is meant to be applied to a chapter in a book. Some textbooks have indirectly adopted this strategy by including a chapter outline, a pre-test, chapter summary and a post-test.
If you were to apply SQ3R to a book on the Python programming language, this is how it could be done:
Survey
During this step you want to skim through the chapter and read any headings, diagrams, charts, pictures, etc. You do not want to read too much in depth but rather get a overview of what to expect in the chapter.
Some items that I might pull out of the book are:
Functions
Objects
Indenting
Lists, Tuples, Dictionaries
Exceptions
If you don’t understand something upon the first glance, start to formulate some questions.
Question
From the items that you just skimmed were there any items that made you curious or unsure? This is where you want to start formulating some questions. Write down several questions that you want to understand about content you just skimmed. Some questions you might ask are:
How is indenting my code important in Python?
What data types are objects?
What is a tuple?
You may also have a question that is not relevant to the chapter you skimmed such as:
Why is Python preferred over scripting languages such as Perl?
Though it may not be answered in the chapter, it may be covered in later chapters.
Read
Now you are ready to start reading the chapter. While you are reading start looking for answers to the questions that you posed previously, but try not to ignore the other information.
If the book you are reading contains code, try to walk through the code on paper without typing it into a computer.
Recite
After you have read the chapter, try to summarize by writing down the main points of what you read.
How is indenting my code important in Python? Indenting is required in Python and results in standardized formatting.
What data types are objects? All data types are objects.
What is a tuple? A tuple is an immutable list.
Write down the answers to your questions and then write down any other additional information.
What does immutable mean?
In this step you should explore the code samples introduced in the chapter. Type and run the sample code to see if the actual output is the same as the expected output when you previously read through the code.
Review
At this point you should be able to comprehend all the main points in the chapter from memory, if not, write down more questions and repeat the read, recite, review steps until it becomes clear.
By completing all the steps of SQ3R you should have a mastery of the chapter content. I find that this strategy tends to work better with technical books or textbooks than with novels.
How does this reading strategy compare to how you typically read a chapter of a technical book?
How to Read a Book Using SQ3R
Before I entered college over 10 years ago, I participated in a 1-day seminar for incoming freshmen called Strategies for Success. The purpose of the seminar was to introduce you to study habits and prepare you for the college workload. What reminded me recently of this seminar was a book that I started reading: ‘Secrets of the Rockstar Programmers’. The book is a collection of interviews with top programmers. In the first chapter I came across a term that looked vaguely familiar: SQ3R. When I got to thinking about it, I recalled that it was during the Strategies for Success workshop that I originally heard about this.
What is SQ3R ?
SQ3R is an reading strategy, abbreviated: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. This technique is meant to be applied to a chapter in a book. Some textbooks have indirectly adopted this strategy by including a chapter outline, a pre-test, chapter summary and a post-test.
If you were to apply SQ3R to a book on the Python programming language, this is how it could be done:
Survey
During this step you want to skim through the chapter and read any headings, diagrams, charts, pictures, etc. You do not want to read too much in depth but rather get a overview of what to expect in the chapter.
Some items that I might pull out of the book are:
If you don’t understand something upon the first glance, start to formulate some questions.
Question
From the items that you just skimmed were there any items that made you curious or unsure? This is where you want to start formulating some questions. Write down several questions that you want to understand about content you just skimmed. Some questions you might ask are:
You may also have a question that is not relevant to the chapter you skimmed such as:
Though it may not be answered in the chapter, it may be covered in later chapters.
Read
Now you are ready to start reading the chapter. While you are reading start looking for answers to the questions that you posed previously, but try not to ignore the other information.
If the book you are reading contains code, try to walk through the code on paper without typing it into a computer.
Recite
After you have read the chapter, try to summarize by writing down the main points of what you read.
Write down the answers to your questions and then write down any other additional information.
In this step you should explore the code samples introduced in the chapter. Type and run the sample code to see if the actual output is the same as the expected output when you previously read through the code.
Review
At this point you should be able to comprehend all the main points in the chapter from memory, if not, write down more questions and repeat the read, recite, review steps until it becomes clear.
By completing all the steps of SQ3R you should have a mastery of the chapter content. I find that this strategy tends to work better with technical books or textbooks than with novels.
How does this reading strategy compare to how you typically read a chapter of a technical book?
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