How do I need to learn and to understand the overall material when it comes to reading an academic textbook for a course?

Answer 1

Do a summary of what you read, either chapter by chapter or paragraph by paragraph (for more complex subjects). Summarizing helps you pinpoint the main ideas in a text or paragraph. Make the material yours. Doodle and create diagrams based on what you are reading, use arrows to show a relationship of cause and effect, create tables with data like dates, amounts, places, facts, and then create graphs with those tables (Excel is a good tool to use for that). Turn that text into something you can understand better through any means (even comics will work! even drawing stick figures!). Also underlining the main ideas or the ones that you think are the most important will help. Write the main idea of each paragraph beside each paragraph on your textbook. Or on a copy of the page. Well these are just a few things you can do. You can even record yourself talking about the subject, as if you were teaching someone about it. In fact you will be teaching yourself. If it's good enough you can even post it.:)