Read major topics and subheading and the first sentence of paragraphs. Look quickly at charts and diagrams and read the captions. Textbooks usually have a summary at the end of each chapter that will provide an overview.
Surveying is an excellent way to start a study.
Provides advance organizers. Advance organizers serve as topics or categories around which facts and details may be organized and subsequently learned. Advance organizers have been shown to be very important in helping students learn, remember, and interrelate material they have studied. A preview of the material to be studied and learned forms a broad framework of prior knowledge upon which new knowledge and understanding can be built. Not everything is of equal importance.