Effective Reading

You can never benefit from whatever you do if you don't enjoy it. Before you even get hold of a book, you must first know what you sought for. A fresh mind absorbs information better than a restless one. So before you start, find yourself a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere to be in and you're ready to go!

Participate While You're Reading

Immerse yourself in the text you're reading. Well, you might want to believe that you need to pay attention even while reading fictions, because from it you gain new set of vocabulary and perhaps learn interesting styles of writing too. Noticing the tiny bits of a fiction such as language structures, length of sentences, mood, kinds of punctuations used and some other aspects helps you understand better than those plain readings without observing thus enhancing your reading experience. It's almost like watching a movie. You need to understand the storyline to enjoy it, no?

So we now know where I'm getting us to: noticing the important parts of a text while reading. How? Simple! It can be as traditional as highlighting points (careful not to highlight the entire page because you can't tell points from elaborations) to drawing eye-catching graphic organisers! The idea is to get yourself focused to the gist of the text and not get distracted halfway and start all over again. Oh that's the last thing we'd ever want to do.

Get into a Discussion

After some period of silent reading, engage in a group to discuss what you have read. You and your partners can remind each other of important points and even improve comprehension through a Q&A session. Get a moderator to keep your discussion on track, someone good at drawing mind maps to draw graphic organisers, and someone good at locating nearby photocopy machines and a dollar or two in his pocket to photocopy a summary of what your group members raised during discussion. There you have it, a product of your reading!

Allow Yourself the Freedom to Express

When reading a reference text for literature review or any similar sorts, it is wise to have near you a pen and paper. Read up your research articles, take some time to get the whole idea, list down important ideas on a piece of paper and add up whatever relevant points you thought of along the way. This gives you room for creativity and being expressive.