Effective Reading Techniques and Note Taking Methods for Students

This essay covers important reading techniques that can help students become more efficient readers and four methods of note taking that will help students remember new information.

Individual essay

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Important reading techniques that can help students become more efficient readers............1
Four methods of note taking that will help students remember new information..................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
It is essential for every student to generate reading habit on regular basis because it has
various kinds of benefit for them such as it will develop effective communication skill, it
improves concentration, it enhance knowledge and many others (Top 10 Benefits of Reading
for All Ages, 2020). There are various kinds of reading techniques such as skimming,
scanning, detailed reading and many others which will help a student to enhance their
efficient reading. The following essay will cover important reading techniques that can help
students become more efficient readers and four methods of note taking that will help
students remember new information.
MAIN BODY
Important reading techniques that can help students become more efficient readers
Reading skill is the ability of a person to read, understand and interpret well to a
written text (How to Improve Your Reading Skills, 2021). it is essential for the students to
focus on their reading skills which can further help them to learn adequate manner of
pronunciation of words. There are various kinds of importance and benefits of reading for a
student and few of the benefits that include, Exercise of mind, reading is considered as one
of the best exercise of mind and it will further help to enhance analytical ability of a
individual. It also helps to develop memory to remind the things for longer period of time. It
helps to learn new language, effective reading is the part of communication skill. It helps
to learn new language through story reading and understanding the words and sentences
appropriately (Importance And Benefits Of Reading Skills In Communication, 2020).
Reading also includes to understand the sentences which a individual read. Reading builds
vocabulary, reading habit will help a individual to develop their vocabulary and
pronunciation of those words easily which they felt tough to speak before generating
reading habit. Improved vocabulary will further help a individual to represent them self in
front of others appropriately and clear the interview rounds of communication test in their
professional life. A 2019 poll showed that 69% of employers look for hiring those
candidates more who are having effective soft skills (Benefits of Reading Books: How It
Can Positively Affect Your Life, 2022).
1

There are various techniques for a student to improve their reading skills and
become a effective reader. Few of the techniques are Annotate and highlight text, it is
essential for students to highlight and underline the valuable information while reading a
content. They can also underline the word which they are unable to read properly due to
pronunciation. Then they are required to read that word again and again till they learn how
to read that word properly. Scanning, this is on of the most important reading technique
where readers analyse some specific points by looking at the whole content. This technique
will help the students to analyse the main points to remember. For example, this technique is
used to find out a particular name from guidebook of telephone (Ibrahim, 2018). Skimming,
this reading technique is related to reading only main headings. This technique is used to
preview the content before reading it in detail. Here, students can analyse whether they need
to read the content in detail or not after reading the heading. This will help the individual to
analyse whether the following content covers their interest area to read the whole content or
not. Active reading style, this is the technique where an individual get in-depth
understanding of text. It is good for the reader to read the content and understand it clearly
to enhance their knowledge.
On the other hand, Detailed Reading is the technique which is used for extracting
useful information from whole content (7 Reading Techniques for Increasing Learning &
Knowledge, 2022). Here, an individual skip the text first and then go through it again to read
it again to analyse which information will help them to enhance their knowledge. Reading a
content more than once will help the individual to grab effective knowledge for longer
period of time. One of the most popular reading technique is Speed Technique, it helps
increase the reading speed of an individual without compromising the understanding of the
content by reader. The readers who use this technique, they basically identify words directly
without focusing on each letter. Practice of reading will improve the speed of reader. Other
technique is Personalize the content, this is also one of the most effective reading
technique where students can connect their reading material with their personal life. This
will generate interest in students will to read the content appropriately and put their best
efforts to understand the text. Setting reading goals is another technique where a student
can set target for their own reading styles. Here, they mention that which reading style they
want to learn in a particular period of time. Here, they also mention the actions or steps
2

which they can follow to achieve their set goals and objectives to learn reading style. This
technique will help a student to enhance their reading skill appropriately which is beneficial
for their professional life. Read in portions technique can also help a student to improve
their reading efficiency (8 Tips to Help Students Build Better Reading Skills, 2022). Here,
reader can break down the content for reading into smaller components to generate interest
to read huge texts. On the other hand, small segments for reading will help the students to
retain the information quicker and for longer period of time (Rosyida and Ghufron, 2018).
This technique will further help the students to build confidence in understanding the
complex subjects. Reading journals and newspapers on daily basis can also help a
student to enhance their reading efficiency. A student who read newspaper on daily basis
will gain effective knowledge regarding global situations and their speed of reading will
also enhanced.
Four methods of note taking that will help students remember new information
There are various kinds of note taking strategies which can help a student to enhance their
academic career well and few of the note taking methods are List method, Outline method,
Concept map strategy and Cornell strategy. List method, this method focuses to write as
much as information as possible and it also ignores the processing of the information. This
method is considered as ineffective method for a student. This method is also considered as
one of the most easy way of note taking strategies because here students only write the
content without understanding that which part is important and which is not important to
write. This method is used by those students who are having improper study skills. It is
suggested that students must avoid this method as it is considered as one of the most
unproductive method of note taking for a student (Alfar, 2022). It is most important for a
student to review their notes on regular basis and make corrections if they found any
mistake in a particular sentence. The Outline Method is considered as one of the most
effective note taking method for students because it allow the students to prioritise the
material. This note taking method is having appropriate structure where key ideas are
written at the left side of the page. Numbering scheme is also used by this method. One of
the most biggest disadvantage of this method is that the student can face issues in
identifying the content which should be noted when teacher move from one concept to
another. It is essential for a student to use effective word processing applications such as
3

Microsoft Word for note taking when they use laptops or computers for note making
purpose. Outline method of note taking are written in the way of bullet points which is easy
to understand by the reader. Here, writer only focuses to write those information which are
important and cover all detailed information about the topic. It is essential for students to
review their notes after their class gets over. It is also essential for the students to make their
notes in their own language so that it can help student to clear their doubts and make them
analyse that whether they are understanding the concept of topic or not.
Third method of note taking is Concept Map Method, this method consist of using graphs
and comparison analysis techniques to compare the relationship among ideas. This method
is appropriate for those students which supposed to compare the relationship between two or
more topics to analyse a specific result. It is effective to make complex information in easier
way to understand. This method is also having advantage for students to move from one
idea to another easily and again come back from second idea to first idea without having lots
of confusion (Veeramsetty, Singal and Badal, 2020). Here, students are required to mention
the name of the topic in the middle of page and circle it well and then they are required to
make branches of that circle to record more detailed information. Arranging the branches
with each other which are linked closely is another step in this note taking method. When
students generate new idea, then they can move to New page and make new circle and then
make new branches. Using arrows to show the relationship between two factors in this
method will further make it easy and effective note making technique for students. It is also
effective if a student summarize the whole chart within one or two paragraph below after the
map of note making to make it more easy to understand the graph. Hence, this method is
one of the most effective method of note making for science students who requested to
relate relationship between two or more chemical components in their Chemistry classes.
Forth method of note making is Cornell method, this method was developed by professor
Walter Pauk in 1950s at Cornell University. This method is considered as one of the most
effective note making note for most of the universities and they also recommend to use this
method of note making in their teaching styles. It is easy to use and helps student to identify
prioritize topics. It is having simple format which is consist of four boxes, a header, two
columns and a footer. Header is the small box which is placed on the top of page. General
information is written in this box such as course name and date of the lecture. Two columns
4

were make under header. Left column will cover one third page size and right column will
cover rest of the space of page. Right side column which is wider is called the notes column
because this column is mainly used to write notes related to topic. Where as left column is
called cue or recall column. This column is used to write down the keywords, questions,
main ideas and many others. Footer box is placed below these two columns and it is used to
write down the summary of the topic in own words by the students.
CONCLUSION
From the above information it is concluded that reading skill will help a individual to
develop their personal and professional skill. A effective reading habit can help a student to
improve their vocabulary, increases confidence and many others. There are various reading
techniques which can be used by students to make their reading skills effective. Few of the
techniques are scanning, skimming and detailed learning. It is also concluded that students
must focus on their effective note making technique to remember their learning during their
lectures. There are four methods of effective note making which are List method, Cornell
method, Outlining method and Concept Map method.
5

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Alfar, H.E., 2022. Sentiment Analysis for Arabic Call Center Notes Using Machine
Learning Techniques: A Case Study of Jordanian Dialect. Technium Business and
Management, 1(1).
Bozorgian, M. and Aalaam, M., 2018. The impact of effective reading strategy instruction
on EFL learners. International Journal of Research, 7(4), pp.39-55.
Ibrahim, N.A., 2018. Developing communicative performance through effective reading on
second language learners. American Journal of Education and Information
Technology, 2(1), pp.1-4.
Rosyida, F. and Ghufron, M.A., 2018. Herringbone and Tri Focus Steve Snyder Technique:
The Techniques for Teaching Reading Comprehension Viewed from Students'
Reading Habit. International Journal of Instruction, 11(3), pp.603-616.
Veeramsetty, V., Singal, G. and Badal, T., 2020. Coinnet: platform independent application
to recognize Indian currency notes using deep learning techniques. Multimedia
Tools and Applications, 79(31), pp.22569-22594.
[Online]
Top 10 Benefits of Reading for All Ages, 2020. [Online] Available
through :<https://markhampubliclibrary.ca/blogs/post/top-10-benefits-of-reading-
for-all-ages/>
How to Improve Your Reading Skills, 2021. [Online] Available through :
<https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-improve-
reading-skills/>
Importance And Benefits Of Reading Skills In Communication, 2020. [Online] Available
through: <https://harappa.education/harappa-diaries/importance-of-reading/>
Benefits of Reading Books: How It Can Positively Affect Your Life, 2022. [Online]
Available through: <https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-reading-
books/>
7 Reading Techniques for Increasing Learning & Knowledge, 2022. [Online] Available
through: <https://www.iedunote.com/reading-techniques/>
8 Tips to Help Students Build Better Reading Skills, 2022. [Online] Available through :
6

<https://www.waterford.org/resources/tips-to-help-students-build-better-reading-skills/>
7