<p>Ok, so I want to ask you fellow student out there about a edgy topic, textbook reading.</p>
<p>To give some background on myself, I did horrible first year in college.Did no homework or read any textbooks, worked and played football.Ever since I started reading textbooks every page,front to back, my grades have went way up.</p>
<p>Now, I have been in college since 2009.?My patience and drive are wearing out thin.It seems like my overall drive to read has somewhat diminished.However, Im scared not to read at all, because then I'll have no knowledge that I need (I'm going into education).</p>
<p>I know some people in college would say "textbook reading, what? You read those things?"</p>
<p>So, my question, should I really read my textbooks? Ive gotten to the point where I only read the important stuff and leave everything else out.</p>
<p>I’m a senior in high school. A lot of my teachers aren’t making us read textbooks. They loosely base the lessons off of it, & sometimes there will be homework from it, but for the most part, we don’t even have to take our books to class. Textbooks, I think, are definitely losing ground. I think–no, I know-- that I learn better with a textbook. I don’t think learning solely from the textbook is the best way, but using it as a supplement certainly helps. Like, after the lecture on a section, reading the section in the book helps clarify and deepen my understanding.</p>
<p>It depends on your professor’s expectations are. One bio prof I know lectures completely differently than what is in the textbook, and both are fair game for the exam. My chemistry prof enjoys putting questions on the exams that ask what the fifth word on page 493 is. In those classes, I absolutely read. My physics prof bascially went over what we needed to know in class, so I used the textbook for examples to help during HW. My math prof pretends we don’t have a textbook, so I don’t even buy it.</p>
<p>So the best answer is that it totally depends on what your professor expects. If he explicitly tells you that he expects you to do the reading, do the reading. If she references it a couple of times and supplements lectures with it, I’d skim it. And if, after the first exam, the exam is entirely based off of lectures, not the book, never open the book again and take good notes.</p>
<p>As others have said, it really depends on the class and your professors expectations. I just started a sociology course this week, and the professor pretty much told us that the text book will be mostly irrelevant to the course. It’s a Social Problems course, so it’s a lot more discussion oriented than lectures and reading. He said that he’s going to have a lot of handouts and emails for us, and he said that reading the text book would be beneficial, but not strictly necessary to at least pass the class. But, I’ll still be reading the text book. </p>
<p>A lot of people don’t read their math text books, which I think is a big mistake. You get plenty of examples and descriptions, definitions etc during the lectures, but it’s ALWAYS beneficial to read through the books, see things explained in a different way, and see more examples. </p>
<p>I always read my text books regardless, but many people get by without them.</p>