Do you have trouble remembering what you read? If so, try these reading methods.
When I was a student, I had trouble remembering things that I read.
Whether it was key facts from textbooks or events from literature, I had difficulty memorizing the information for exams or essays.
There were certain things I would retain, but most of them just evaporated from my mind.
As a result, my grades were affected negatively.
Luckily for me, one of my teachers noticed my problem and offered to show me some studying techniques.
The two that I found most useful were making mental links and writing down key highlights.
How to Remember What You Read
Making Mental Links
The first method, making mental links, is done by linking information from the text to something in your life.
This could be done by making a connection between events from your life, something happening in the world, or something from pop culture to the information from the book that you’re reading.
For example, if you’re reading about The Spanish Flu, you can link some of the facts or events from this time period to more modern events, such as the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The key thing with this method is to think critically and create a relationship between the two entities so that you can understand the facts from the text better.
Doing this will help you remember the information.
Writing Highlights
The next method is writing and making highlights.
As you read the text, highlight and write down all of the important information and all of the things that are interesting to you.
You can write them down on an index card and then use them to study. Or you can write them in your notebook as part of your notes. You can also type them up in a notetaking app, such as Notion or OneNote.
For instance, I liked to highlight keys things, such as definitions and dates and examples and whatnot, in the text, and then copy them into my notes by hand.
I also wrote down my thoughts and/or mental links here as well.
This helped me make sense of the lectures and their connection to the information from the textbook.
It also helped me remember the facts better because there’s something about physically writing things down that boosts memorization.
Alternatively, you can use Ryan Holiday’s method for taking notes.
Ryan Holiday’s System for Reading
This technique is similar to how I write down notes.
But the key difference is that he waits a while before transferring his highlights to index cards. I write them down immediately after I finish an assigned reading.
Holiday also keeps and organizes all of his index cards in a tidy common place book (storage for all of the information and quotes that you saved). I just keep it in a notebook.
How Students Can Use This System
As a student, you can create a common place book in a notebook (or notepad) or in a word document.
To do it digitally, instead of writing down the facts and whatnot onto index cards, you can just create a word document and place them there.
You can also save it in a notetaking app.
To organize the notes, label each document as the unit or topic it’s from, and place the notes in their respective ones.
Additionally, make use of headlines as you go from one chapter to the next. This will help keep your notes organized.
Then, when you need notes from a particular chapter for a research project, for instance, you can quickly find it and review it.
However, as I stated earlier, writing the highlights down by hand does increase memorization.
So, keep that in mind.
Other Methods You Can Use to Remember What You Read
These are the two methods that I prefer. But there are other things you can do to remember what you read.
You can write a summary of what you read. You can write a short review of the novel or short story. Or you can create/find and answer a set of analysis questions as you read.
Final Thoughts
Remembering what you read is crucial for getting good grades.
The majority of the information that we have to intake for school is via reading texts and literature.
This is why you need to keep the information that you ingest organized because it’ll help you retain it better.
Thus, start implementing these two methods and remember what you read. Your grades will improve because of it.