Is it more effective to read the textbook before or after the lecture?
Often it depends on the professor, but many of my professors expected the students to read the textbook before the lecture to gain a basic understanding of the topics. The lecture then ususally went into greater detail. Reading the textbook before the lecture ususally helps you get more out of the lecture. You can concentrate on the more advanced aspects instead of spending the lecture trying to grasp the basic elements. Besides, you’ll probably end up reading the texbook again after the lecture in preperation for midterms/finals.
I believe it is more effective afterwards as you may not know what is relevant in the textbook. Taking notes in the lecture is very useful and then when reading the textbook, you’ll know what is most important to your course. Also, in some subjects, the textbook will have examples and these will make more sense once you have a basic understanding of the subject. Hope this helps although I preferred to study notes and just refer to textbooks when I needed examples when I was at university.
I say beforehand. 2 main reasons. 1) Basically if you read the book e.g. the day before, as with most informtaion you store it shrt term. If you get asked the next day about it, you will probably not be able to repeat back even half the salient points without some sort of cue or reminder. However, when the same topic is then covered again by your lecturer, the repetition, even if not exact, will trigger the brain to release more of what you read beforehand and start making more memory connections, increasing the number of triggers you associate with a particular topic, as well as increasingly store it long term. Now when you read a question in an exam, you should be able to (after revising obviously) recall more relevant data. 2) If you come across a concept you don’t fully grasp (this is probably more relevant for science based lectures) you can follow the explanation given to you by the lecturer who may explain in a different way or use different diagrams. If you still don’t get it y
