Effective Reading and Time Management

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Effective Reading and Time Management

• SLDC - Effective Learning for Best Results

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Managing your time

• How will life here be different in terms of
  managing your time and in particular your reading
  workload?

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A bit like juggling?

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Maintaining a healthy work/life balance

• Successful time managers
• Identify (personal)targets
• Estimate how long work will take and plan ahead
• Prioritise
• Reduce time wasters
• Meet deadlines
• Have a well organised work space
• Have an easy to use filing/recording system

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Advice from past students

• Treat it like a regular job with routines
  meals, exercise, study, part-time work, fun and
  sleep time
• Use a diary and time planner to keep records of
  what needs to be done and when
• Be realistic about your workload and vary your
  activities within your study time
• Share concerns (with friends, college tutor,
  support services)

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Managing your reading ?????

• How do you read for assignments?
• Are you happy with the way you manage your
  reading?
• How do you feel about reading for university
  assignments?
• Do you have any useful strategies to share?

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One students approach

• Reading time is limited but the amount available
  seems infinite
• I never read whole books. I was extremely
  selective in extracting only the data which was
  directly relevant to my essay topic, but from a
  wide variety of sources
• (First Class Honours Graduate)

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Effective Reading Decisions

• What?
• How?
• Why?
• When?
• Where?

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What and How?

• What?
• relevant articles, books or chapters (check
  contents and index for relevance) abstracts,
  intros and conclusions
• How?
• Depending on your purpose, time, length and
  depth of the assignment, you might read in depth,
  skim or scan and highlight, underline and
  question or comment on the texts

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Why?
seminar
presentation
essay
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Why?
get a grasp of a new topic
find specific information
develop understanding of a topic
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When and Where?

• Work out the best time and place for different
  types of reading

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Manage your time and your reading

• Dont let it manage you

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More stuff on effective reading

• Questions to ask of the text (15)
• SQ3R (16)
• Reasons for note taking (17)
• Methods of note taking (18- 23)
• Reading records (24)
• Useful websites (25)

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Questions you might ask while reading

• What does X mean?
• Whose idea is this?
• What evidence is there for this?
• Do I agree?
• How does this fit with other things Ive read?
• Could this be relevant to my assignment?
• Why this particular example?
• Is the language ambiguous?
• Where are my knowledge gaps?

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SQ3R

• Surveying - get a general idea using headings,
  diagrams, introductions, conclusions/summaries,
  topic sentences, key words
• Questioning - what do you want to get from the
  text?
• Reading - faster in less relevant places, more
  slowly in others where you need to understand
  material relating to your questions
• Recalling - reflecting on what you have learnt -
  mind maps may be useful here
• Reviewing - check your knowledge what you still
  dont understand - need to reread

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Why make notes and record the source?

• To help understanding by simplifying the original
• To record the main points to help jog your memory
• To relate new info to existing knowledge
• To avoid plagiarism by recording full
  bibliographic details
• Adapted from Fairburn. G and Fairburn. S.
  200198 Reading at University a Guide for
  Students. Buckingham OUP

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Ways of taking notes from your reading

• Reading underlining
• Labelling heading pages
• Linear notes
• Key wording
• Diagrammatic/pictorial notes
• Adapted from Fairburn Fairburn 2002

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Reading underlining

• Weakness you arent processing the meaning so
  effectively by converting the ideas into keywords
  or rewriting it in your own words.
• Ways of extending underlining
• writing notes in the margins (summary,
  questions, comments),
• identify key bits using asterisks
• writing headings at the top of important pages
  to summarise content

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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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www.thethinkingbusiness.co.uk/
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Note Taking -using abbreviations

• e.g. - for example
• i.e. - that is
• etc. - etcetera and so on
• N.B. - note
• Q. - question
• no. - number
• probs.- problems
• p./pp - page/pages
• 1st - first
• max. - maximum

• c. - about/approximately
• ref. - reference
• thro/thru - through
• Imp - important
• Sit. - situation
• Eval - evaluation
• Analy - analysis
• Diff/diff.y - difficult/difficulty
• Diff.t - different

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Reading record

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Useful Websites

• SLDC http//www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/celt/sldc/mater
  ials/reading/reading.htm
• Learnhigher (2009) Reading
• http//learning.londonmet.ac.uk/TLTC/learnhigher/P
  lagiarism/resources.html
• Gillett A (2009) UE fAP Reporting - paraphrase,
  summary synthesis http//www.uefap.co.uk/writing
  /writfram.htm
• University of South Australia http//www.unisanet.
  unisa.edu.au/notereading/
• Books
• Fairburn. G and Fairburn. (S. 2001) Reading at
  University a Guide for Students by Buckingham
  OUP
• Arksey (ed) (1992) How to get a first class
  degree. Lancaster Unit for Innovation in Higher
  Education
• Tolmie P (ed) (2000) How I got my First Class
  degree. Lancaster Unit for Innovation in Higher
  Education