Know How To Digest
Do you read to succeed?
The reading style you need depends on what you want to do.
- Get an overview of a subject
- Look for specific facts
- Clarify something you don’t understand
- Collect information for an essay answer
Avoid the stares
If you’re going to perform you need to be focussed. You don’t need to psyche yourself up like an athlete before the 100m but you do need to concentrate.
The keys to concentration
- Let your family know your study timetable so you’re not distracted
- Remember, useful concentration lasts only 30-40 minutes
- Then take a break of 5-10 minutes – drink water, text a friend, get some fresh air
- Like anything else, concentration improves with practice
Your eyes tend to read ahead so keep your pencil below the line you're reading. It makes a big difference to concentration..
Skim reading
If you want to know if a particular text is useful to you, get an overview of a subject or look for specific facts, don’t waste time reading every word; skim read instead.
Fast forward
- First, check headings, subheads, graphs, captions, bullet points – make sure the text’s useful
- Read first and last paragraphs, they usually introduce and summarise the text
- Skim the whole text, highlighting keywords, making margin notes and symbols (if it’s your book)
- Summarise the whole text in no more than two paragraphs (see below)
- Make a note of anything you don’t understand and ask your Study Buddy
Analytical reading
To clarify a cloudy subject or prepare an essay answer, you need to read analytically. Follow the seven-stage model overleaf.
Your eyes tend to read ahead so keep your pencil below the line you're reading. It makes a big difference to concentration.
The Seven Step Process
- Read the whole text, think it through and note down any questions
- Read it again and use a colour coding system to categorise information. Highlight major keywords, sketch symbols in the margin (cannon for war etc)
- Create a summary sheet from your notes, using keywords and symbols to summarise the text as briefly as possible
- Review your summary sheet with your Study Buddy, use the original to correct mistakes or clrify, then create a mind map
- Talk your Study Buddy through your mind map, ‘teach’ them the subject
- Don’t forget to take a break every 30-40 minutes – water, fresh air.
- If you don’t review your work, studies show you’ll lose 8-% of what you’ve learned in 24 hours and 98% in seven days. So take 20 minutes every day to review everything you’ve learned
Big tip: Use a light pencil (2H) for making notes in books so you can erase them later, or photocopy the text if you can’t hang on to the book. Keep your librarian sweet, you never know when you might need a favour.
What note-taking method should you use?
Good note-taking follows closely from thorough reading. The summary sheets you made after your analytical reading will form the solid basis of all your revision.
Nota Bene
Make best use of summary sheets, keywords, headings, subheads, bullet points
Highlighting, margin marking, symbols and colours will also help you to navigate your notes quickly
Learn to use PowerPoint on your PC and create notes slideshows
Golden nuggets
Assess your workload and set a date by which you will have boiled down all your revision to summary sheets. That’s your first major landmark on the way to your exams – summarise everything you need to know.
Always make a note of the title, author, publisher, date of publication and relevant page numbers of any books you use for reference. You may need them again.
When are mind maps helpful?
Use your senses
Making mind maps lets your brain interact with the subject– helping your understanding. As well as having the subject summarised in note form, you now have it as a picture too.
It’s all relative
Let’s make a mind map of Einstein’s life, which we already have in note form
- Write ‘Einstein’ and a symbol in the middle of a sheet of paper
- Draw four different coloured branches (the four sections from the notes)
- Use colour coding and symbols to summarise each section
- Make associations between the colours and the headings
- Look for repeated words
- Make chains of association between different keywords
Is it working for you?
- Trace the map, but not the words
- How many headings can you remember?
- Compare to your original:
- which areas need more work?
Another memory boosting trick
The human brain can remember 5-9 unconnected items – not much use when it comes to exams. You can remember more by relating facts in another way: use mnemonics. SOLAR is a mnemonic about the principles behind mnemonics.
- Symbols: draw simple pictures, like a dove above the Eiffel
Tower to remind you of the Paris peace conference after WW1
- Outstanding: exaggerate, build facts into unbelievable or unusual stories – they’ll be more memorable that way
- Links: create chains of symbols, like a kangaroo and blotchy skin to remind you skin cancer has increased in Australia
- All five senses: involve sight, sound, smell, taste and touch
in your story, it makes more memorable mnemonics
- Repetition: make new summary sheets, mind maps, ‘teach’
your Study Buddy, recite your mnemonic on the way to school
Chilled salad? If you’re feeling stressed, eating lettuce and celery will help to calm you.