How To Remember What You Read

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Student Lifehacks
How To Remember What You Read 1

While many authors offer multiple techniques to teach you how to read faster and read more, not many actually help you be more productive. Being efficient depends on apprehending and remembering more out of all the information consumed. And you know how these days we spend our time receiving information from everywhere around us, as people and companies selfishly fight for our attention.

We are constantly in a state of information overload, which makes our brain decide for us what will be marked as “valuable” and remembered and what will be put into the remote corners of our memory.

While preparing to read, firstly, become familiar with the topic and learn the main expressions and terms. This way, you will not only better get the point of the text you are about to read, but will also be able to build a system between new and old facts. Next, skim the text before actually reading it, and pay attention to the keywords and ideas. This way, you will have the information primarily analyzed, and it will facilitate perceiving the text contents fully. After you do all that, the final step for you to grasp the essentials of the material you’ve been carefully reading is to do something with this information: i.e., explain to others, rewrite, make a song out of it, etc.

Afterward, use the basic method: repeat and reread, and go back to the information apprehended in a while: a week or a month; this way, your brain will be set on remembering the information to use it later, not just analyzing it and putting aside. Peter Brown, the author of the bestselling Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, warns us that simple rereading won’t make any difference. The secret is the power of retrieval—reproducing the information you’ve read in written or any other form. Therefore, taking tests or discussing the topic with friends is a sure way to remember what you’ve read.

Taking into account the existing Adler’s levels of reading: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical, focus on the last two, as they provide a deeper understanding of the information read. Make sure to define the subject matter and the major parts and matters of the book, and outline these things by making a short summary. While reading, take some time to stop, contemplate and ask yourself questions about what you’ve just read.

The ultimate goal in absorbing a lot of information is to be able to use it, which undoubtedly includes vivid associations and a well-defined structure. To achieve that, you can work on creating visual or sound impressions and then building associations by making a chain between the new and familiar information. It will also help big time because this way, you will train different types of memory: iconic and echoic. If you also find a way to appeal to kinesthetic memory, then reading will become quite fun and engaging.

Moreover, there has been carried out a research that proved that reading on paper significantly increases the efficiency of the whole process, as you use your visual and tactile senses to interpret the information. Printing is still a powerful tool for learning! With all that, making notes and underlining the important or curious sentences will sufficiently speed up the process and add color and emphasis to each particular subject.

And the last point speaks in favor of paper textbooks, which are offered in many college categories on our website, so don’t hesitate to browse and pick the books you need! Moreover, take note of our buyback program, which allows you to save cash and even earn some! You can also use our new 7% extra coupon codeNEO123 (expires on 10/20/2017!).


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Iliana K