How do you retain and understand information when you are reading?

First, it's important that you select the correct size of text for a reading session. Reading an entire textbook in one long session means that you will find it extremely difficult to retain any detailed information due to the amount that you have read. Instead select a chapter of the book that you would most like to focus on and select that for one reading session, or alternatively search the index of the book if you are focused on a specific element of the course and then when you find the pages associated, skip straight to them. Simply reading that section of text however will often leave you forgetting parts of what you've read and leading you to reread the text again, which is very inefficient for time. One way to prevent this from occurring is to read the beginning and the end of the section you have selected, this is especially useful when reading complicated published authors whose ideas and writing may be above the academic level of which you're required to understand, as this will allow you to find their overall opinions on the subject as they will be outlined in the introduction and finalised in the conclusion. Therefore you will then have acquired the view of a published author on your subject without having to fully understand the details of their argument. If however the text you have selected is required to be understood in detail then you need a different approach, after every paragraph you read create a summary title so that if you ever need to come back to the subject to refresh your memory, you can read the correct section using as little time as possible by selecting a summary title. The details of each paragraph can then be memorised under the subheadings of those summary titles, allowing you to remember large swathes of detail while only having to actively remember a list of subject titles.