Students

Studying

All students who are in school will be exposed to academics and will need to read material, that has been taken from a range of sources, written in a range of style and which is needed for a wide variety of purposes.

Before you begin your study, you must be clear as to why you want to read the material on hand. Do you want to study because;

1.You want to know the concept in depth and be clear about your fundamentals.
2.You want to revise the information as you have an exam coming up in the next few days.
3.You need to get a general overview about the subject matter before borrowing a book on the same subject from the library.
4.The teacher is going to teach the matter the next day in class and you want to be prepared for the same.

Or any other reason. Whatever be the reason, as a student you must remember that there are many ways to read and not just one way, which is right or correct.

Amongst the many ways to read your textbooks, the primary method during school is active reading. In active reading there is considerable amount of mental activity and you as a student take an active part in the reading process.

Active reading helps students cover a lot of material in less time and students manage to remember and recall more of the content of what they have read.

There are many ways for you to read actively. Some of the strategies that you may adopt can be

A. Slow and careful reading.

When you attempt slow and careful reading, your attempt should be to analyze and evaluate the content, follow procedures and the step-by-step instructions, find all the available information and make sure that you take notes or even better make cue cards for reference later on.

B. Skimming

Skimming is used to identify and find the main idea and overall organization of the material that you are reading. Skimming, will help you identify the main ideas and organization of the text and you can use this strategy as a pre reading attempt before you study the material in detail and carefully.

C. Rapid Reading

Here your attempt is to search for specific information by reading the text at a fast rate. Rapid reading will enable you to gain an overall impression of the chapter quickly.

D. Scanning

When you scan a text, your mind works to find specific details like dates, names, places, formulae, incidents etc. or an answer to a specific question that you have to learn.

While you will develop your own style of reading, we would recommend that you take a healthy mix of these strategies to read and learn better.

Most children and students who are dyslexic have benefited from reading the summary or the abstract of the text first.

You should read through the text and look for the main ideas and repetition of any words if there are. Look out for definitions, examples, visuals and explanations. Identify the signpost words and either underline them or highlight them.

Read the text critically and try to understand the conclusion of the text. What is the text trying to communicate to you? Is it enough, or do you need to research it a bit more to grasp it. Think about the purpose of reading the text and read critically.