We’ve had a brilliant response from students who wanted to have a Wednesday Workout about reading – both in your Change Makers module and for your degree. Thanks to all the students who sent in their ideas, tips, tricks and questions about reading. If you want to add something, please Ping Dr Elizabeth Hauke in Basecamp or send an email to e.hauke@imperial.ac.uk.
Check out our Tik Tok for a quick summary of the main ideas, or read more below.
1. Don’t try to memorise what you are reading – think about the meaning of what you are reading and how it fits with other things you are learning in your studies
This is actually a great tip – when you memorise something, you learn it in isolation. That piece of learning is very static and inflexible – you will only be able to access it in the way that you learned it and it will not be easy to connect different pieces of memorised material together. When you read and learn more freely, you will naturally make connections between what you are reading and what you already know – and what you learn from that reading will stay in a flexible format in your mind so it will be available to make connections with future things that you learn. Connections are key – these links between nuggets of information help us to recall that information in different settings, when questions or problems are phrased differently. This is the type of learning that makes us very good in interviews and exams – it helps us to ‘think on our feet’. It also helps us to form networks out of our knowledge, which means that if there is something we don’t know, we can visualise all the ‘nearby’ pieces of knowledge that we do know and make good guesses about the ‘gaps’ in our knowledge. This makes us very effective in exams!
2. Try to mix up reading before and after lectures – don’t try to do all your reading at once
Another great idea here. This relates to reading briefly or skimming material before lectures – whether that is previewing lecture slides or tackling pre-reading material. Use this pre-reading to build your awareness of the topic or material. This will ‘prime’ your brain to be ready for the discussion or explanations that might come in your lecture or session, making it easier for you to participate or take notes. After the lecture you can go back to the notes you have taken or the reading material and review it with the benefit of your preview and the discussion or lecture, meaning that you will be able to learn much more from the material in a more efficient way. This three step approach is used very effectively by many students.
3. Don’t worry about how much you are ‘forgetting’
Some students mentioned that they get very worried about how much they do not remember from their reading, and feel that they have to keep going back over the reading to gather more and more information. What they should be doing instead is celebrating how much they have learned and remembered – and be confident that they will keep building on this knowledge as their learning progresses. You don’t have to learn everything all in one go – try not to worry about how much you don’t know. Especially at the start of a new module or academic year, everything can feel overwhelming – but you are at the beginning and if you stay engaged with your reading and classes, you will develop the required knowledge as time goes by.
4. Be purposeful in your reading
Don’t fall into the trap of looking at a pile of material that needs to be read and feeling that you have to pay equal attention to every word, sentence or paragraph on each page of each reading. Each piece of reading has been given to you for a different reason, and may be written in a different way. Think about what type of reading you have (textbook, lecture notes, academic paper) and what you are required to learn from that reading. You might have learning outcomes, problem questions, reflection questions – there will be something to guide your approach.
- Familiarise yourself with the guidance first – think about the learning outcomes or prompt questions before you start to read.
- Skim the whole reading – get a feel for how the reading is organised (in a paper you have the abstract, introduction/literature review, methods, results and discussion; in a textbook you might have a framework or subheadings to guide you). Identify where the most useful information is within the paper and focus your effort on those sections.
- Make any notes against the learning outcomes or prompt questions
- Don’t get stuck on difficult passages or things you don’t understand – flag them for further attention, but carry on with your reading before going back to those sections. You might find they become clearer when you read on.
- Don’t try to memorise at this stage – if there is a list of terms that you need to remember – again flag this to come back to. Build that flexible framework of awareness before you start trying to ‘remember’ things. If you have a general understanding, you will have somewhere to ‘put’ the things you later memorise – which will make them more accessible to recall, and will help you to create links with them in your future learning.
5. Use problem sheets, questions and advice from other students and past papers to help you use what you have read
This is a great tip – when you learn from reading, you have only done the first part of the learning process. What really cements that new knowledge is ‘using’ it in some way. Prioritise this – even if you need to go back to the readings and ‘look up’ the answers, this is a really good use of your time. It also helps with recall, because you will be able to remember the question and the act of going back to your reading or notes, and if this piece of knowledge is needed in the future, you will have an established pathway to retrieve this knowledge.
Last Updated 03/10/2023