Eight Tips To Remember What You Read

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7) Oper­ate With­in Your Atten­tion Span

Pay­ing atten­tion is cen­tral to mem­o­riza­tion. Try­ing to read when you can’t con­cen­trate is wast­ing time. Since most peo­ple have short atten­tion spans, they should not try to read dense mate­r­i­al for more than 10 or 15 min­utes at a time. After such a ses­sion, they should take a break and quiz them­selves on what they just read.

Ulti­mate­ly, read­ers should dis­ci­pline their atten­tion so they can con­cen­trate for longer periods.

8) Rehearse Soon After Read­ing Is Finished

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.

In Sum­ma­ry

  1. Read with a purpose.
  2. Skim first.
  3. Get the read­ing mechan­ics right.
  4. Be judi­cious in high­light­ing and note taking.
  5. Think in pictures.
  6. Rehearse as you go along.
  7. Stay with­in your atten­tion span and work to increase that span.
  8. Rehearse again soon.

 

– W. R. (Bill) Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D. Sci­en­tist, pro­fes­sor, author, speak­er. As a pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, Bill has taught about the brain and behav­ior at all lev­els, from fresh­men, to seniors, to grad­u­ate stu­dents to post-docs. His recent books include Thank You, Brain, For All You Remem­ber. What You For­got Was My Fault‚ and Core Ideas in Neu­ro­science.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. deepikaur says

    Excel­lent arti­cle! I just read that entire post, out loud, and retained the main points from it. These tips will cer­tain­ly come in handy. Thank you.

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  6. Jacob says

    This arti­cle has real­ly helped me with the abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend what I am read­ing, thank you.

  7. Liz says

    The first step in learn­ing how to read and retain infor­ma­tion from schol­ar­ly works is to under­stand how they are orga­nized. Each field has spe­cif­ic con­ven­tions regard­ing the com­po­si­tion of peer reviewed arti­cles and books. Most sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles include an intro­duc­tion which sets the stage for the research study, a meth­ods sec­tion which describes how the research was con­duct­ed, includ­ing sam­ples and mea­sures, a results sec­tion dis­cussing the sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses con­duct­ed and whether the hypoth­e­sis was sup­port­ed or refut­ed, and a dis­cus­sion sec­tion that con­sid­ers the study s find­ings in light of the research lit­er­a­ture and draws over­all con­clu­sions. Books con­tain struc­tured argu­ment, gen­er­al­ly lead­ing from an intro­duc­tion to chap­ters that make and sup­port spe­cif­ic points, and con­clud­ing with a dis­cus­sion that draws con­clu­sions. Learn the con­ven­tions of your discipline.