How to Read and Remember
How often have you read a book from start to finish, only to discover that you haven’t retained very much of the information it contained? This can happen with any type of book: literature, textbooks, or just-for-fun books can all contain information you really want or need to remember.
You can remember the important facts of a book by learning to reinforce what you’ve read in a simple method as follows:
- Have sticky notes and a pencil on hand as you read.
- Try to get into the habit of keeping supplies on hand for this active reading technique.
- Stay alert for important or pivotal information.
- Learn to identify meaningful statements in your book.
- These are often statements that sum up a list, trend, or development in a textbook.
- Mark each important statement with a sticky flag.
- Place the flag in position to indicate the beginning of the statement.
- The sticky part of the flag can be used to underline the first word.
- The “tail” of the flag should stick out from the pages and show when the book is closed.
- Continue to mark passages throughout the book.
- Don’t worry about ending up with too many flags.
- If you own the book follow up with a pencil.
- You may want to use a very light pencil mark to underline certain words that you want to remember.
- This is helpful if you find that there are several important points on one page.
- Don’t mark a book that doesn’t belong to you.
- Once you have finished reading, go back to your flags.
- Re-read each passage that you have marked.
- You’ll find that you can do this in a matter of minutes.
- Make notes on a note card.
- Keep track of all your readings by creating a collection of note cards.
- These can be valuable at test time.
- Erase the pencil marks.
- Be sure to clean up your book and remove any pencil marks.
- It’s O. K. to leave the sticky flags in.
- You may need them at finals time!
Tips:
- In the course of reading a book, you may come across several noteworthy statements in each chapter, or a single thesis statement in each chapter. It depends on the book.
- Avoid using a highlighter on a book. They are great for class notes, but they destroy the value of a book.
- Only use a pencil on books you own. Don’t mark library books.
- Don’t forget to use this method when reading literature from your college reading list.
What you need:
- Book that is interesting or required reading
- Coloured sticky-note flags (small)
- Pencil with eraser (optional)
- Note cards.
By Grace Fleming.
http://homeworktips.about.com/od/homeworkhelp/ht/readand remember.htm
