Reading and Study Strategies

Yesterday (I usually make entries in this blog early in the morning on the day after class) we started talking about a very important subject for all university students. You are going to be swamped with reading. And, the reading is going to be full of words you don't know, or word usage that you are not familiar with. Consider the word swamped in the second sentence of this paragraph. It is a metaphor, an allusion or a reference to a word which is comes from a different topic area (can you guess the meaning of allusion from this sentence?) In this case, the reference is to boats and sailing. Sometimes small boat gets hit by a very big wave, and fills with water. In this case the boat is swamped and might even sink. If you are swamped with something, it is like you are drowning in work (another metaphor), and don't know what to do.

As a student there are several things you must learn to do. The first is just to keep reading -- trying to get the general meaning, and not stopping with every single word you don't know. True, there will be a few readings (usually the professor will tell you which ones they are) which are so important that you really must understand them completely. But for the most part, you are only expected to get the 'general idea' of the reading. Further, as you study in higher and higher levels at university, you will have many readings on the same subject. This means that the readings support each other as the meaning gradually builds. [Did you notice that support and build are metaphors to the 'construction' of knowledge?]

So, keep reading. But how can you remember the general idea of what you have read? One way that works for many people (including me) is to use colored high-lighters. Another idea is to quickly make a few pencil notes in the margin of the reading. I do this sometimes to link ideas between readings. Certainly if the same idea is mentioned in several different readings, that confirms that it is a main idea and worth remembering.

If you (or your professor) think this is a really important paper, it might be worth making some more extensive notes for it. In class we looked at using a graphic organizer for this purpose, but of course, you can use any technique you like. If you want to go even further, you can write a short summary of the reading. One suggestion is to close the reading, and work only from your notes. This is a good check that you have taken the right notes, and also avoids plagiarism.

We will spend most of today and Friday's class on the idea of plagiarism, and the 'answer' to plagiarism, which is the use of references, citations and a bibliography. We will also be looking more deeply into the idea of the genre of academic writing, and the uses of the reference list within that genre. More in class today!

John