18 Intensive Reading for Main Ideas and Details
Intensive Reading
Intensive reading means reading a text with great focus and concentration, and with one goal in mind: to understand and learn the information as thoroughly as possible.
Intensive reading requires mental energy, so you should create the physical conditions for yourself to read intensively; for example, in a quiet, comfortable place, at one of the campus libraries, a coffee shop, etc. When you create a space with minimal or no distractions, you will be able to preview and add annotations properly.
The outcome of intensive reading is to understand the text, but what is the true meaning of “understanding the text” ? We believe that effective intensive readers can understand the text if they identify these 4 elements:
* A General Topic: What the whole article is about.
* Subtopics: Sections of the article that address specific topics within the larger one.
* Main Ideas: Sentences that express key information within each subtopic.
* Relevant Supporting Details: Information about the main ideas that expresses how, what, when, where, why, how much, or how many.
Relevant Secondary Details
Effective readers can bypass, or ignore secondary details and focus only on relevant details; for example, clarifying examples, important statistics, and other information that helps explain the main ideas.
Readings often contain “fillers.” These are secondary details that aim to provide background on the topic. Many times, these secondary details are only complementary to the main ideas rather than truly necessary, so your task is to sort out all this information and select what is relevant.
Intensive reading takes time, reflection, and concentration, so you should be prepared for this and avoid doing only a “quick read” of important texts in your courses. As you read intensively and annotate the text, you should notice subtopics, which are sections of the article consisting of one or more paragraphs, that address a topic within a larger one. As you read about each subtopic, you will find main ideas, relevant supporting details, and relationships among ideas. Once you understand this set of relationships–within subtopics and in the entire reading–you will be able to say what the general topic of the reading is.
Specific Strategies To Read Intensively
1. Preview the reading and see if it has subtitles.
If it does, you have an advantage because subtitles usually divide readings into subtopics (usually, but not all the time!). However, don’t assume that subtitles provide an accurate name for each subtopic. Subtitles may not express clearly what the subtopic is about if they are short, ambiguous, or simply serve as a visual division for the reader. In that case, subtitles may only hint at the focus of a subtopic. Therefore, it is useful to add a margin note next to each subtitle to indicate what the subtopic is about. The way to do it is by asking yourself: What is this whole sub-section of the reading about?
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- What if the text does not include any subtitles?
If the text does not have subtitles, identifying subtopics could be more difficult. In this case, pay attention to pivot expressions that signal sudden changes in the narration. Most of the time, these words divide the reading into different subtopics. After you locate a few sentences or paragraphs with a particular subtopic, write it down at the margin and mark up the text with brackets or boxes to visually indicate where the subtopic begins and ends in the text itself.
2. Identify the main ideas within each subtopic.
Main ideas are sentences that contain key pieces of information that the author wants you to know about the subtopic. Main ideas should be underlined and/or highlighted in the text. In addition, margin notes should make main ideas stand out with supplementary phrases; for example restatements, paraphrases, or comments.
3. Handle secondary details carefully.
They should not be highlighted or underlined unless they are really useful, practical, or complementary to clarify the main ideas in the subtopic. Only relevant secondary details should be highlighted and commented on.
How many times should I read the articles?
To read any academic text effectively, you should read it a few times (2 or 3 times, or even more depending on the complexity of the article). It is impossible to understand an academic article thoroughly by reading it only once. You will not be able to grasp the subtopics, all the main ideas, the connections among themselves, and the general idea of the entire article. Moreover, you will not be able to mark it up effectively.
