Once the characteristics of amoraic and talmudic sources are clear, it is possible to distinguish one layer of the sugyah from the other by preliminary scanning, and to apply all of the necessary skills together to make Talmud learning much more efficient and effective. The secret to effective study is pre-scanning of a sugyah to be learned before studying it for content, in order to determine what kind of a sugyah it is, and what are its components. This pre-scanning of the sugyah leads us to strategic decisions about which cognitive tools to apply to the sugyah. In Western literature, it is natural to read texts from top to bottom, line by line. This is because we know that the entire text was written or edited by one person, in linear fashion. Talmud, however, is not built in this way, and must not be read as if it were. Talmud texts are composites of sources from many different times, places, and authors. After a text has been pre-scanned, it should be learned according to its historical layers, so that the development of the concepts and the legal decisions comes clear.

Pre-scanning should be done in the following steps:

1. Is the sugyah amoraic or talmudic? This is determined by identifying and “mapping” the Amoraim who are mentioned in the sugyah. If they are mentioned in chronological sequence, the sugyah is amoraic. If not, the sugyah is talmudic. Sometimes, exceptions to this rule may be found in “combination sugyot” from Israel and Babylonia, aggadic sugyot, sugyot which contain memrot from the last amoraic generations, or a number of sugyot which do not adhere to generational ordering for various didactic reasons. In the event that the sugyah is amoraic, then we learn all the amoraic sources first, before learning any of the stama d’talmuda. Afterwards, we learn the stama. In the event that the sugyah is talmudic, we learn the stama d’talmuda in order, learning the amoraic sources in the specific context of the Talmudic discussion.
2. If the sugyah is amoraic, is it a “natural” sugyah or an “edited” sugyah? If the sugyah is based on amoraic dialogue, it is “natural”, and if there is no dialogue, but the various opinions are each formulated separately, it is “edited.”
3. If the sugyah is an “edited” amoraic sugyah, is it single-academy or multiple-academy sugyah? This decision will clarify the extent of the complexity of the sugyah. How many memrot are there in the sugyah, from which country, from which academies, and from which generations?
4. Is the sugyah Babylonian, of the Land of Israel, or a “combination” sugyah?
5. In the sugyah is talmudic, is it a topical sugyah, or a sugyah based on discussion or argumentation patterns? If it is topical, mark the stages in the discussion of the topic. If it is a pattern sugyah, mark the stages of the pattern.

After pre-scanning, we go back to learn the sugyah according to its type, applying all the skills and tools appropriate for that type. Learning to pre-scan sugyot entails detaching oneself from the natural tendency to first seek out meaning. Skills-based learning of Talmud first seeks out form and structure, leaving the search for the topical meaning of the sugyah for a slightly later stage.

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