How to read and remember

Have you ever asked yourself why you spend so much time in reading your book and yet still do not understand? Researches has been carried out to find out these but to discover that many read without knowing why they are reading but to fulfill all righteousness.
Below are some points that will help you to read with speed and comprehension:

1. Read with a purpose.
2. Skim first.
3. Be judicious in highlighting and note taking.
4. Think in pictures.
5. Rehearse as you go along.
6. Rehearse again soon.

1. Know Your Purpose

Everyone should have a purpose for their reading and think about how that purpose is being fulfilled during the actual reading. The advantage for remembering is that checking continuously for how the purpose is being fulfilled helps the reader to stay on task, to focus on the more relevant parts of the text, and to rehearse continuously as one reads. This also saves time and effort because relevant items are most attended.

• to understand a certain group of people, such as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.
• to crystallize your political position, such as why a given government policy should be opposed.
• to develop an informed plan or proposal.
• to satisfy a requirement of an academic course or other assigned reading.

         2. Skim first:

Some reading tasks require no more than skimming. Proper skimming includes putting an emphasis on the headings, pictures, graphs, tables, and key paragraphs (which are usually at the beginning and the end). Depending on the purpose, you should slow down and read carefully only the parts that contribute to fulfilling the reading purpose.

         3. Be judicious in highlighting and note taking:

Use a highlighter to mark a FEW key points to act as the basis for mental pictures and reminder cues. Add key words in the margins if you don’t find useful clues to highlight.

Almost all students use highlighter pens to identify key parts of a text. But many students either highlight too much or highlight the wrong things. They become so preoccupied in marking up the book that they don’t pay enough attention to what they are reading. A better approach is to highlight just a few key words on a page. If many pages don’t require highlights, sticky tabs on pages with highlights can greatly speed a study process for whole books.

         4. Think in picture:

Moreover, pictures are much easier to memorize than words. Those memory wizards who put on stage shows owe their success (as do card counters in casinos) to use of gimmicks based on mental pictures. Ordinary readers can use to good affect the practice of making mental images of the meaning of text. The highlighted key words in text, for example, if used as a starting point for mental pictures, then become very useful for memorization. One only has to spot the key words and think of the associated mental images. Sometimes it helps to make mental images of headings and sub-heads. Pictures also become easier to remember when they are clustered into similar groups or when they are chained together to tell a story.

Mental pictures are not the only way to facilitate memory for what you read. I understand that actors use another approach for memorizing their lines for a play, movie, or TV show. Actors “get into the part” and study the meaning of the script in depth, which seems to produce memory automatically for them. When the same script is memorized with mental images, it appears that the text is being looked at from the outside, as something to be memorized. Actors, on the other hand, appear to be looking at the same text from the inside, as something to be experienced. The actors probe the deep meaning of the text, which inevitably involves attending to the exact words. For example, they seem to explore why their character would use a given set of words to express a particular thought. This is still a process of association, except that actors are associating words with real meaning and context as opposed to contrived visual image meaning and context.

         5. Rehearse as you go along:

Read in short segments (a few paragraphs to a few pages, depending on content density), all the while thinking about and paraphrasing the meaning of what is written.

To rehearse what you are memorizing, see how many of the mental pictures you can reconstruct. Use headings and highlighted words if needed to help you reinforce the mental pictures. Rehearse the mental pictures every day or so for the first few days after reading.

        6. Rehearse after you must have finished reading:

At the reading session end, rehearse what you learned right away. Avoid distractions and multi-tasking because they interfere with the consolidation processes that enable longer-term memory. Answer again the questions about content mentioned in the “Rehearse As You Go Along” section.

Think about and rehearse what you read at least twice later that day. Rehearse again at last once for the next 2-3 days.