Hi. I'm Sara Kepros, the reading specialist here at Kirkwood. last time we talked about
previewing a text in order to activate your background knowledge
but what about for those times when we're reading a chapter about something
we don't have any background knowledge about
so the other thing you can do is expand that background knowledge
and I tell my students that this is really sensual if you don't know
anything about a chapter
or a topic that you're going to be reading about sometimes your professors
will do some
activating your background knowledge in introducing things to you but sometimes
they don't just because of time
so it's your job as a student to be that advocate for your own learning
so what are some ways we can expand our background knowledge
we can do things like just talk to someone talk to a friend a parent
another student about the topics in that chapter
we can read a shorter article that's easier
to quickly digest before we get into that top dense
chapter. we can do things like Google the topic and see what's out there about
something
and a really nice resource is YouTube
sometimes you can go to YouTube and Google your topic
and find a multitude videos or demonstrations by other instructors
about that topic that are really short and
easy to digest. this topic nurture verses nature
if we Google that you can see here that there are several
four to five minute videos that give us some background knowledge
on that topic. just to take five minutes to get yourself familiar and a visual
format before you read that text but chapter can really increase your
comprehension
and really increase your success with understanding that chapter
so come back next time for how to actually
read and successfully understand
that difficult textbook chapter