Strategic leaders always have limited time, and finding time to negotiate USAWC distance program studies can be a struggle. Being able to carefully read and process information requires skill, practice, and sustained commitment. Reading well—with efficiency, exceptional comprehension, and a critical eye—is an essential and necessary competency for those who make decisions and offer informed recommendations to others.
Effective leaders employ critical reading strategies to access diverse texts with confidence and:
Recognize underlying and stated claims
Analyze argument content and structure
Locate assumptions within the text
Evaluate evidence quality and pertinence
Identify strengths and weaknesses
Draw conclusions about argument veracity
Whether they are "fast readers" or not, one important skill strategic leaders, busy executives, academics, and astute graduate students all practice college-level reading, sometimes known as "predatory reading."
When pressed for time and dealing with a large volume of new and often complex subjects, students cannot simply approach this material in the same way as if they were reading for pleasure. Neither do they have time to read the same passage over and over. Instead, DDE students need to develop the practice of identifying and focusing on the critical parts of the material they need to read. These steps are helpful to commit to memory:
Before beginning to read, first consider - what should one be looking for in this material? This may seem like a waste of critical time, but it is one of the most important things to do. In the USAWC materials, this is easy - refer to the Course, Block, and Lesson Objectives and Points to Consider in the syllabus, because these areas generally make clear what the important lessons are.
Next, identify the author's argument. The argument is the most important part of scholarly writing, and for most position papers for government or business. An argument will identify a problem and then provide a solution through a series of assertions, supporting evidence, and analysis. Look for any examples they use to understand how their solution works. Also look for underlying, as well as stated, claims.
Also pay attention to definitions of critical terms, theories, or concepts that are important for understanding the argument.
Students will use a similar approach in USAWC writing when making assertions: they should support those assertions, and then provide analysis that proves the assertions are valid. This method of argument is generally the standard for senior leader writing throughout government. Some recent academic scholarship follows this method in a straightforward and easily digestible format, while earlier writings, such as Clausewitz, will require a hunt to find their arguments.