There are a variety of different strategies that an individual can use to read a particular piece of material, but it is important for an individual to find the best strategy for the type of resource that the individual is using. There is a wide range of different written materials that an individual may have to use in order to study for an exam, interview, or other similar purpose and each type of written material requires a different reading strategy in order to use that resource in the most effective way possible. One of the strategies that an individual can use if he or she is reading an essay, poem, short story, or other work is known as the question method. The question method, which can actually be used for any written material whether the material is fictional or not, is primarily used for analyzing an essay or chapter that the individual needs to understand the inner meaning of the essay or chapter and not necessarily simply what the material is saying.
The question method is actually very simple and really only consists of one step that the individual repeats over and over again for each line, sentence, paragraph, and/or passage of the material that he or she is reading. Once an individual begins to read the particular work that he or she is attempting to analyze, the individual should write questions about anything and everything within the text that he or she thinks may have another meaning. These words or phrases may have another meaning to the author or a meaning separate from the literal meaning of the text. The questions that an individual may write about a particular meaning that he or she has found within the text may include questions such as "does this actually mean this," "why did the author use that word instead of another word," "could this mean something else to the author," or "what is the author actually saying here?" It is also important to realize that the goal is not necessarily to find a definite meaning within the text, but a potential meaning. In other words, the individual should not necessarily be looking for obvious meanings or meanings that are certainly present in the text, but instead should be looking for meanings that the individual believes may be present, but cannot be absolutely sure.