Reading books and articles
You will be reading books (and articles) in preparation for two main tasks: the writing of essays, and the passing of tests and exams. There is also a third purpose, which seldom occurs to some students, and that is pleasure: the enjoyment of a well-written book which enables you to share the experience of people in the past. History requires as much hard work as any other discipline; but it has many rewards in store for those who read widely enough. Your lectures should provide the framework of the course and also pose questions, suggesting possible answers to some of them, but most of the questioning must come from you.
Too many students still come to university assuming that History is a matter simply of reading the right books, preferably "the right book", in order to memorize "the right answer". Such an attitude negates two of the great values of studying History: the development of critical thinking, and logical reasoning. You must train yourself to ask questions as you read.
First, be clear about the purpose for which you are reading. Ask questions before you begin reading. With an essay, you have a question provided. Be sure that you understand what it means; study the wording of the question, for every word has been carefully chosen to indicate the structure or balance required in your answer. For example, a question asking about the "causes and consequences" of a given event demands a reasonably even balance between the two; not three pages on causes and one on consequences. Notice the limits implied by a question; don't stray outside them, or you will lapse into irrelevance.
Having grasped the point of the question, you must then keep to it. This is not easy. Our minds do not naturally work in a logical way. We tend to think by random association. It takes skill and discipline to construct a lucid and relevant argument by defining a problem and then working through the evidence to a logical conclusion. Your reading will tend to distract you; history books are full of fascinating stories - enjoy them, by all means, but keep the purpose of your reading uppermost, and keep reminding yourself of the question you are trying to answer.
There are many different sorts of books, so that different approaches are needed to make the most effective use of them; also, some books will be less useful to your immediate purpose than others, even though they are regarded as important or excellent in their own right. The methods are basically two, at each extreme, with variations in between:
(a) skim-reading - very rapid "surface" reading, to locate information. You must train yourself to use contents-lists and indexes as a matter of habit;
(b) careful detailed study - absorbing every detail, thinking about the arguments used. This takes much more time, but is the only way to absorb and understand a book. Some books need several readings; you will be chastened to discover how much you missed the first time.
Skim-reading can become a habit - this danger must be guarded against - but it is the only practical way to commence reading for an essay or in preparing a topic for the exam, to fill out your total picture of a topic and make yourself aware of different approaches to the same body of information.
How to prepare a topic for an exam? Here you must supply the questions yourself, although practising on recent exam papers (say, the past 3 years) is helpful once you have made your notes - to test their adequacy. We do not usually expect you to master the whole of a course; we expect you to select topics, and the lecturer will advise you on this. But having selected those topics, we do expect you to master them.
Your lecture notes will give you the framework of each topic, as the lecturer sees it, and suggest lines of further inquiry. The Reading Guides issued at the start of each course will direct you to the more useful books and articles. But the actual study and note-making is up to you.