Effective Reading and Note-Taking PDF

**Effective Reading and Note-Taking** **1-Effective Reading** **Introduction** Reading is an essential skill for all learners. It helps learners to process and evaluate information to build their knowledge and offers them an opportunity to see how language is used. Reading is a complex process th...

**Effective Reading and Note-Taking** **1-Effective Reading** **Introduction** Reading is an essential skill for all learners. It helps learners to process and evaluate information to build their knowledge and offers them an opportunity to see how language is used. Reading is a complex process that involves working to build up a sense from a text. Thus, it is an active process of reconstructing an author\'s ideas. **1. Definition of Reading** Reading is the process of constructing meaning from written symbols (signs) and. In other words, it is a complex cognitive process of decoding written symbols in order to get a meaning. Baudoin et al (1994, p.1) describe reading as a: "complex activity that involves both word recognition, the processor perceiving how written symbols correspond to one's spoken language; and comprehension, the process of making sense of words, sentences and connected paragraphs". To read effectively, the reader must be able to see, decode, perceive, comprehend, and react to what is written. As soon as the reader sees the text, s/he starts to perform a visual activity to recognize the language s/he is reading. Then, the brain starts to process the information given by the eyes to make sense of it, not just a sense from the written words and sentences, but also ideas, memories, and knowledge triggered by those words and sentences. **2. Types of Reading** **2.1. Intensive Reading** According to Harmer (2001), intensive reading is concentrated and less relaxed. It concerns shorter texts and aims at attaining learning goals with close guidance from the teacher. During this type of reading, the learner gains text comprehension to make critical judgments about the text s/he is reading by offering his/her interpretation. Thus, be able to state a well-founded opinion about the content, the intention, the arguments, and the language used in the text. Intensive reading is generally done slowly and requires a higher degree of understanding because it focuses on details and analysis. That is, it means extracting meanings of a given text with taking a great consideration to grammatical, syntactic and semantic elements.i.e. it is detailed understanding that is not limited to understand the general ideas but to how texts are organized including the structure and metacognitive strategies used by both authors and learner (Alyousef, 2005) **2.2. Extensive Reading** Extensive reading refers to the careful reading of long written materials such as novels and books in which the learner is interested in for comprehension. It is mostly performed outside the class time and its main purpose is to build reader confidence and enjoyment. Long and Richards (1971, p.216) identify extensive reading as \"occurring when students read large amounts of high-interest material, usually out of class, concentrating on meaning, \"reading for gist\" and skipping unknown words\". **3. Reading Techniques** **3.1. Skimming** Skimming is a reading technique meant to look for main or general ideas in a text, without going into detailed and exhaustive reading. As the name suggests, skimming is done by actively separating the crucial information from the unnecessary details and extracting the essential data in a short period of time. **3. 2. Scanning** Scanning a text means looking through it quickly to find specific information. Scanning is commonly used in everyday life, for example when looking up a word in a dictionary or finding your friend\'s name in the contacts directory of your phone. Scanning and skimming are often confused though they are quite different. While skimming is concerned with finding *general* information, namely the main ideas, scanning involves looking for *specific* information. **4. The Purposes of Reading** According to Grabe and Stoller (2019), the purposes for reading include: **a. Reading to search for simple information:** Reading to search for simple information is a common reading ability, though some researchers see it as a relatively independent cognitive process. It is used so often in reading tasks that is probably best seen as type of reading ability. **b. Reading to skim quickly**: Reading to skim quickly is a common part of many reading task and a useful skill in its own right. It involves, in essence, a combination of strategies for guessing where important might be in the text, and then using basic reading comprehension skills on those segments of the text until a general idea is formed. **c. Reading to learn from text:** Reading to learn typically occurs in academic and professional contexts in which a person needs to learn a considerable amount of information from a text, it requires abilities to remember main ideas, recognize and build rhetorical frames and link the text to the reader base. **d. Reading to integrate information:** Reading to integrate information requires additional decision about the relative importance of complementary, mutually supporting or conflicting information and likely restructuring of a rhetorical frame to accommodate information from multiple sources. **e. Reading to write and reading to critique texts**: Reading to write and reading to critique texts may be task variants of reading to integrate information. Both require abilities to compose, select, and critique information from a text. **f. Reading for general comprehension**: Reading for general comprehension when accomplished by a skilled fluent reader, require very rapid and automatic processing of words, strong skills in forming a general meaning representation of main idea, and efficient coordination of many processes under very limited time constraint Purposes of reading are not only for students, but also the people in general. They must read extensively to get information and knowledge of social living. It can help a person keeps informed on the social, political, and economical problems of his country. **5. The Benefits of Reading** Reading can improve one's life in several ways leading to better well-being, mental health, personal growth, and a boost in confidence. These benefits will carry over to school work, career and social life. The benefits of reading may include: - Expanding your vocabulary through acquiring new words - Stimulating your brain and strengthening mental capacities. - Improving your memory - Increasing knowledge - Strengthening focus and concentration - Relieving stress - Improving concentration and promoting analytical and critical reading. - Developing writing skills. **2/Effective Note Taking** **Introduction** Note taking has been an integral part of human development throughout history. Students take notes in schools, academies and universities to preserve information. Note taking is a crucial part of the learning process. It helps students learn, retain, and recall information. Thus, note taking is an important study skill that helps us do better. We need it to call up important information, to review information, and to store that information so we can use it later. **1. Definition of Note Taking** Note-taking is the practice of writing down or otherwise recording key points of information. It is an important part of the research process. Notes taken on class lectures or discussions may serve as study aids, while notes taken during an interview may provide material for an essay, article, or book. It is to record information captured from another source. By taking notes, the writer records the essence of information. **2. Note Taking Methods** There are different note taking methods that can be used. What is important is that learners find a method that works for them and encourages the use of good note-taking qualities and stick with it. The following are some types: **2.1. Outline/Outlining Method** Notes are organized in a structured form. Different topics and subtopics are organized by bullet points, dashes or numbers that means in a form of an outline. It reduces the editing and reviewing time afterwards and the relationship between main topic and subtopics are identified quickly. **2. 2. Cornell Method** Notes are structured in two columns and one row below. The smaller right column contains the notes associated with the main topic and the bigger left column contains the keywords/questions/hints associated with the notes on the right. The row below summaries the collected notes. While taking notes use the right column and reviewing your notes in the left column. It is a simple and efficient method to take, review and summarize your notes in a systematic format. **2. 3. Boxing Method** All topics/pieces of information that are related to each other are grouped together in a box. The notes in each box can be organized/ structured with another method like the outlining method for example. While taking digital notes e.g. on an iPad or another tablet the boxes can be reorganized, reordered and resized really easily and quickly. **2. 4. Charting Method** This method consists of a table of rows and columns. The main topic can be found in the top row and the subtopics/keywords/information are organized in the columns below. Each column categorizes a distinct topic of the main topic. It is a useful method to get an overview over a complex topic especially when a topic covers lots of facts and statistics. **2. 5. Mapping Method/Mind Mapping** Notes are structured and organized in a visual way. The main topic stands in the middle or on top of the paper. Then the main topic is divided into subtopics around/below the main topic. The subtopics are also divided into branches and can be linked with each other depending on their relationship. Heavy content can be organized with this method in a simple and structured form. **2.6. Sentence Method** Each topic is written in a whole sentence on a separate line. A visual aid, like highlighting the text with different colors, numbering each sentence and organizing main topics by using headings, can be helpful. With this method lots of details and information can be covered in a quick way. **3. Benefits of Effective Note Taking** Researchers found that if important information was contained in notes, it had around 34% chance of being remembered. Information not found in notes had only a five percent chance of being remembered (Howe, 1970 as cited in Longman & Atkinson, 1999). - Improves focus and attention to detail. Developing note-taking skills engages a student, requiring them to focus and increase their attention to detail, and as we all know, the devil is in the detail.  Promotes active learning. By taking effective notes, students are actively involved in the learning process thus giving it a purpose and increasing productivity.  Boosts comprehension and retention. A proven method of increasing memory retention, note-taking can also increase comprehension by breaking down the content for a student to consume easily.  Teaches prioritizing skills. Often overlooked in its importance, it is essential for a student to be able to select important material and discard unnecessary content. This further adds to their organizational and creativity skills. - Extends attention span. Proven to extend a student's attention span, a necessary tool in any learning situation. - Improves organization skills. By prioritizing content and organizing effectively, a student develops key organization strengths. As teachers are well aware, organization is of a key importance. - Increases creativity. Equipped with the ability to organize their ideas effectively, focus on a particular subject and expand on ideas through knowledge retention, students can use their own initiative increasing creativity and innovation. Note Taking is a critical for learners' success. Students need to choose the method that suits them best and practise it very often. The more they practise, the more proficient will become.