READING AND REMEMBERING
●Summary of this page
●The problem
●How to read academic texts
●A word on speed reading
●How to remember what you've read
SUMMARY OF THIS PAGE
How do you manage to get through your reading, and retain what you have read?
Always remember:
academic material is not meant to be read.
It is meant to be ransacked and pillaged for essential content.
●Be selective.
●Set a realistic time frame for any reading task.
●Never read without specific questions you want the text to answer.
●Never start reading at page 1 of the text, but look for the summary, conclusion, subheadings, etc.
●Read only as much as you need to get the information you are after.
●Always keep in mind what you need, what is relevant to the question you are asking the text.
How do you remember what you have read?
One of the basic principles of memory is that the quality of memory is related to the quality of your interaction with what you are
trying to remember. If you have organised, dissected, questioned, reviewed and assessed the material you are reading, it will sit more
firmly in your memory.
Consider this: why is it so easy to remember the contents of an article about something you are really interested in? It is because
you get involved personally in the events and images the text portrays. You can harness some of the same memory potential in
academic reading by adopting a particular kind of involved ‘active reading’.
Learn to use your own cognitive strengths—visual, oral-aural, systematic, etc.—to create memorability in your reading. Imagine,
visualise, recite, act out your academic material, get it out of the dry text-on-page (or screen) context and put some real life into it.