Managing the Reading

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by Jillian Schedneck0 views·Updated Sep 30, 2020
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  1. Hi, everyone.
  2. I'm Gillian.
  3. I'm a learning advisor with academic skills.
  4. And in this short video, I'm going thio cover the
  5. reading and note taking strategies that we highly recommend you
  6. try out.
  7. So when you're about to read a peer reviewed journal,
  8. article or a report or a book chapter, we suggest
  9. you first of all, think for a minute on how
  10. you can read with a purpose.
  11. So that means you will be able to answer these
  12. questions here you'll be able to really think about first
  13. of all, why you're reading this.
  14. Why has this been assigned to you in your course?
  15. Why did you pick this article?
  16. To help you thio determine and understand the debate in
  17. the essay question you've been asked, um, what information do
  18. you need from this particular source that you're about to
  19. read? How will it help you to participate in your
  20. tutorial? Um, that next week, Or how will it help
  21. you to further understand the debate you're about to weigh
  22. in on on your essay assignment For some examples, you
  23. also want to be thinking about how much time and
  24. energy this particular sources worth.
  25. Is it really?
  26. Ah, seminal text Or is it something a little bit
  27. more minor in relation to what your purpose is?
  28. So working out some some initial conclusions there as to
  29. how much time and energy you think this source will
  30. be worth and that will help you to stay focused
  31. and be able to manage the reading in a little
  32. bit more of a balanced way.
  33. So you always want to have a question in mind.
  34. That question should be related.
  35. Thio. What information do you need?
  36. What do you want to learn from this text?
  37. What do you hope to learn from this text?
  38. And from there you want to start the four s
  39. strategy, so that is search, skim, select and study.
  40. So I'll go over those four.
  41. So the first thing you want to do when you
  42. start to read you this, this particular source or text
  43. you want to search, and that just means taking one
  44. or two minutes to flip through the article or scroll
  45. through the article or chapter or report And think about
  46. how the article is laid out.
  47. What are the different sections reading?
  48. Just reading.
  49. Glancing at those section headings just to get a sense
  50. of what this article is.
  51. Is it an experiment?
  52. Is it a case study?
  53. Is it?
  54. Ah, theoretical argument.
  55. Uh, just getting that quick overview to figure out what
  56. this article is, um and then that will help you
  57. to then move on to the next step, which is
  58. to skim So this will take a little bit longer.
  59. This should take about maybe 20 to 25 minutes, depending
  60. on how long this sources.
  61. But we suggest that you skim those key sections that
  62. you read the abstract in full that you read the
  63. introduction in full.
  64. So if that is not set out as its own
  65. section, you may just read the first three or four
  66. paragraphs of the source and then just read those topic
  67. sentences in the middle and read the full conclusion.
  68. So if the conclusion is also not set out as
  69. its own section, you may just read the last two
  70. or so paragraphs of the source.
  71. And that's going to help you to get that overview
  72. rather than getting lost in the details, which is something
  73. that could very easily happen too many students and has
  74. happened to me as well so it's a really good
  75. idea to try to get that overview so that you
  76. can identify the authors main argument.
  77. And that's what you should try to be thinking about
  78. as you're doing that skimming What is their main argument
  79. and what is their main evidence?
  80. Rather than getting too lost in some of those particular
  81. details and also as you're skimming, you wanna be thinking
  82. about Will this reading help me to answer my question
  83. that I posed before I started reading?
  84. And then the next step should just take a few
  85. minutes where you're actually just trying to select and determine
  86. what are the sections?
  87. What are the even the paragraphs that are relevant to
  88. my question as you skimmed through what seemed the most
  89. relevant to answer the question that you posed at the
  90. beginning before you started reading, it could be that introduction
  91. section. It could be a section in the middle that
  92. went over a particular case study, and you found that
  93. to be the most useful.
  94. It could be the entire article, but it's a great
  95. idea to get that overview to begin with anyway.
  96. So that's when you are really selecting what is most
  97. worth your time to dig into and read more fully.
  98. You may even decide this isn't really relevant at all.
  99. And, um, in that case, you haven't wasted your time
  100. fully reading the entire article to determine this.
  101. You've only skimmed it.
  102. So at that point you're ready to begin the final
  103. step, which is to a study where you are closely
  104. reading the relevant parts and taking notes.
  105. So you do want to engage, and that means no
  106. taking rather than kind of lying on your couch and
  107. thinking you'll just absorb the information and remember it later.
  108. It's better to be an active reader and to engage
  109. in note taking.
  110. So let's go over some note taking strategies we have
  111. here. Think about what your strategy is, so obviously there's
  112. highlighting that's a little bit less active, but it is
  113. useful for some people, but probably you want, engage, engage
  114. a little bit more deeply.
  115. Um, there's mind maps that you can draw If you're
  116. more of a visual learner.
  117. Perhaps that's going to be better for you to think
  118. about the connections between things and write things down in
  119. that kind of way, or perhaps you're more of an
  120. ordered person and you like lines and columns, in which
  121. case that might work out for you as well to
  122. gather those ideas.
  123. Eso You may be thinking about gathering ideas for discussion
  124. in tutorials as you're reading through, you may be thinking
  125. about also creating summaries for exam revision.
  126. So there's lots of reasons to take these kinds of
  127. notes and lots of, um, ways to think about what
  128. your note taking strategy is going to be and what
  129. works for you.
  130. Eso were not necessarily suggesting that you should all become
  131. visual learners and take those kinds of notes as mind
  132. maps. Or that you should all, um, you know, work
  133. with lines and columns.
  134. It is thinking about what works for you, for the
  135. particular assignment that you're working on or for that particular
  136. course. Um, let's say so.
  137. Let's dig in further to look at an example of
  138. how you might take notes if you were more interested
  139. in the lines and columns type of note style.
  140. So this is the Cornell method here, Um, where you
  141. have the Q column, which is your ideas and the
  142. notes column, where you include the author's key points and
  143. then at the bottom, where you provide a summary so
  144. you can then provide a summary of the section that
  145. you've read that you've selected to study.
  146. And that's really important to be able to put together
  147. those summaries.
  148. And so, just on a deeper look at that Cornell
  149. method, um, the Q column.
  150. You could be answering these types of questions.
  151. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this article?
  152. How valid is the research methods?
  153. How strong is the evidence?
  154. How logical is it on dhe?
  155. How does it fit into other research in the field?
  156. If you're, you know, feel able to answer that question
  157. and these types of questions that will show your really
  158. active engagement in this reading on the notes column is
  159. a little bit maybe easier to answer, just thinking about
  160. what are those main aims of the author's argument?
  161. Um, what is their main argument?
  162. How have they fulfilled their aims?
  163. What are their main points?
  164. And what is their evidence?
  165. Just kind of identifying parts of the article or book
  166. chapter or report that you've read as well as then
  167. being able to provide that summary So those were just
  168. some questions to think about to help you to be
  169. able to identify the main parts of the article or
  170. whatever source material you have, as well as, um, how
  171. to engage even more deeply with your own thoughts and
  172. opinions and reactions to the article so that you can
  173. engage more critically.
  174. So those are our ideas for that note taking strategy.
  175. But it is really about, you know, trying things out
  176. and seeing what works for you.
  177. So I hope you found this helpful.
  178. And we'd love to see you in an appointment at
  179. academic skills to discuss this further, if you'd like.