The big secret about reading assignments is that you do not have to read everything — read what you need. Often you are assigned articles to read for the purposes of an assignment or reflection. Before you start reading, review any assignment instructions or reflection questions. Use these as your guide and pay particular attention to the parts of the article that are most relevant.

Highlighting

Highlighting is a great way to stay actively engaged while you’re reading. But you have to be careful that you don’t end up highlighting the whole page! Part of the benefit of highlighting is having a quick reference of the most important points in a reading. And the words and phrases you highlight can also signal questions and wonderings you can bring up later in discussion. Highlighting allows you to process the information and pull out what resonates most. From there, it’s much easier to bring together a summary or thoughtful reflection.

Tips:

• Read one section of an article at a time. For each section, go back and highlight what you think are the most important points.
• Stick to key words, phrases, and sentences that best express the main concepts.

Dyslexia

Here are some tips about how to approach coursework shared by different students with dyslexia at the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

• Embrace the power of dyslexia. Believe in yourself. Dyslexia teaches you to budget your time and work hard, and that work ethic will help you no matter what you decide to do in life.
• Give yourself enough time to complete assignments. Be sure you can work slowly and carefully through everything. Preview readings to identify words you can’t pronounce and talk through the material with your instructor or tutor on a one-to-one basis.
• For reading responses, consider using a dictation program (ex. Dragon dictation software). Alternatively, on many computers with a microphone you can enable the “start dictation” feature directly in Microsoft Word. Some people find that dictation allows them to be more creative and capture the details all at once.
• Set up your devices to read to you. You can use the Accessibility settings to enable your device to read your papers, notes and a range of other materials back to you. Additionally, there are many other options for software and apps that read text for both Macs and PCs. One of the oldest and most popular is Read&Write.
• Ask for help. You can talk through ideas with your instructor and peers to help ensure you understood the material. If you have access to a campus writing center you can get help with written responses, from putting your ideas down on paper to reviewing a draft for typos and incomplete details and ideas.

Non-primary Language

If you are a dual language or multilingual learner, we invite you to read and reflect on the following:

• Embrace your cultural and linguistic identities. Your linguistic and cultural repertoires are incredible assets that allow for diverse perspectives and insights when discussing readings with other participants and colleagues. Embrace, celebrate and find joy in the unique contributions you bring to the course experience. Part of embracing your linguistic abilities is also recognizing what your language needs are. Communicate those needs to your course instructor and fellow participants in order to maximize your learning and complete the readings and course assignments successfully.
• You are your most important advocate. After identifying your language needs, ask for a time to meet with your course instructor to communicate the language supports that will help you complete readings and assignments successfully. Instructors don’t typically assess English language proficiency in the beginning of a course, which is why it’s particularly important for you to clearly communicate your specific language needs. Ask your instructor to collaborate with you in developing a variety of strategies that will support you in completing the necessary reading and assignment requirements.

In order to support you in your self-advocacy journey and conversations with participants and instructors, please read some of the examples listed below of language support strategies you can suggest and/or utilize for reading assignments:

• Access to readings ahead of time. Previewing readings ahead of discussions or when assignments are due can be incredibly beneficial. It allows you to have more time to read and process the information (highlight, write down questions, reread, etc.) without the added time pressure.
• Extended time to complete assignments. If there are readings that are more complex (complex vocabulary terms, lengthier, formal language), ask the instructor for extended time to complete the reading assignment, and if necessary, explain what makes this reading particularly challenging. This is also great feedback for your instructor to have in order to implement language support for other multilingual learners who might communicate similar needs in the future.
• One-on-one support from instructor and/or other participants. When readings are more challenging, ask for an individual meeting with your instructor or a participant in the course. Before the meeting, come prepared to discuss the reading assignment and what made it challenging. In preparation, read and reread the reading, highlight the parts that were hard to understand, write down questions you might have and words you might not understand. Ask your instructor or participant to discuss the main idea and key takeaways from the reading with you before you finalize the meeting, to ensure you walk away with a complete understanding of the content.
• Glossary of content-specific terms and/or practices. Before the course begins, or any time during the course, ask the instructor for a glossary of the most important terms specific to the content/topic of the course. Ask the instructor to please add visual supports to the glossary (any videos that can model specific practices covered in the course, or images/photographs that can represent a specific term). Acknowledge that adding visual supports can be time consuming, but they are an extremely effective language support that will help your understanding of the content.
• Collaborative reading activities. You may want to suggest to the instructor to add more group discussions after completing the readings. Increased opportunities to interact with participants around more complex readings can support the understanding of the overall main idea and key details.
• Reading modifications. You may want to suggest to the instructor to summarize a reading assignment, highlight the key ideas in an assignment for you beforehand, find a video/audio explaining similar topics covered in the readings, or research to see if the same reading is available in your primary language.
• Access to a language dictionary. There are many digital and print language dictionaries available for multilingual learners. You may want to ask the instructor for suggestions on which dictionary would be appropriate and beneficial for you to use. For example, here is a collection of bilingual glossaries for a variety of subjects in over 20 languages by New York University.

Vision Impairments

There are technology tools that can assist you to complete reading assignments if you have a vision impairment. Here are a few examples:

• Set up your devices to read to you. The accessibility settings on your computer provide you with options to hear text read aloud using VoiceOver (Mac) or Narrator (PC). There are also options for freely available screen readers (see: 10 Free Screen Readers for Blind or Visually Impaired Users).
• Use the zoom or magnify functions to enlarge text on your screen.
• Improve visibility with high contrast. High contrast increases the color contrast between the foreground and background on your screen, making text and images more distinct and easier to identify. Check the display settings nested within the accessibility menu on your device.