Reading journals can help college readers successfully meet the demands of complex and sophisticated texts when students use them as a strategy for making meaning rather than simply extracting information. There are three primary reasons for using reading journals at the college level: (1) writing is a way of discovering when students are free to explore new ideas safely, seek patterns, and connect experiences in a journal; (2) writing is a form of learning when students connect their own experience with text content--hence, the journals are not a display of acquired learning but part of the process of exploring and rethinking ideas; and (3) writing can be used to monitor thinking and learning when the readers understand that they are negotiating meaning as they write in response to reading. Encouraging students to be relaxed about putting their thoughts down in a journal, and writing comments that are more probing and supportive than evaluative and judgmental can make students less apprehensive about writing. Assignments of four or five pages a week on a variety of reading material, and requiring students to use an acceptable bibliographic format can help prepare them for other academic coursework. Finally, assigning point rather than letter grades, modeling journal entries for the first couple weeks, and occasionally having students read their classmates' journals can make the journals seem safe places to explore. (Eighteen references are included.) (JC)