When a teacher or lecturer recommends a student to read a book, it is usually fora particular purpose. In many cases, the teacher doesn’t suggest that the whole book should be read. In fact, he may just refer to a few pages which have a direct bearing on the matter being discussed. Unfortunately, when many students pick up a book to read they tend to have no particular purpose in mind other than simply to “read the book”. Often they open the book and start reading, page by page, line by line, word by word; in other words, slowly and in great detail. The result is that students frequently don’t have an overall view of what they are reading; also, they tend to forget fairly soon what they’ve been reading. Students can make their reading much more effective by adopting a strategy aimed at helping them to understand and to remember what they read. Firstly, they should decide precisely why they’re reading the book: perhaps it’s to find some information that’ll answer a question; perhaps it’s to understand a difficult idea or argument, and so on. Then the students should decide exactly what they are going to read; it’s seldom necessary to read the whole book. A good starting point is the contents page, the chapter headings, and even the index at the back of the book. They are very useful in helping to pinpoint the exact pages that need to be read carefully for particular pieces of information.