Study Skills for Higher Education: Explaining Four Reading Techniques and Personal Reflection

This report explains four reading techniques for higher education and provides personal reflection on reading habits. The techniques include identifying new words, reading with a pencil, drawing and sketching, and reading again and again. The report also provides ways to improve reading skills. The subject is study skills for higher education, and the course code and college/university are not mentioned.

Study Skills for Higher
Education

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Explaining the four reading techniques and its importance.........................................................3
Describing personal experience and reading habits.....................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Study skills helps the individual in retaining and organizing large information for the
future growth and development. Further, the present report will identify four reading technique
that are used by students to read information on various subjects. Lastly, the study will present
the personal experience of myself on the reading habits and also identify certain ways taken for
its improvements.
MAIN BODY.
Explaining the four reading techniques and its importance.
Identify new words: It is technique where the reader while reading any content finds out
words that are unfamiliar or new. Thus, while doing so the reader is able to enhance the
vocabulary and understand the content with much clarity. Also, it is important for students as it
allows the students in sentence formation and most of them write definitions of the words into
some notebook for any kind of future reference (Villarreal and Martinez, 2018). Moreover,
through closely observing the challenging words the individual is able to enhance its speaking
skills and read independently for enjoyment most of the times without worrying the nature of
content.
Reading with pencil: It is the method most useful for those readers that wants to
summarize the whole content into small sections or words so that in future not many difficulties
are faced in understanding. Also, in this technique the reader marks, underlines or highlights
important words or lines in the contents so that some meaningful interpretation might be made in
the future (Bracewell, 2020). Moreover, it is important for that student that does not have much
time in going through whole content in the future for revision. Furthermore, the ones that are
using any kind of library book might use sticky notes for noting down such words.
Draw and sketch: It is another technique that is useful for students when large amount
of challenging data is been provided that needs to be remembered thoroughly. Also, under this
technique the students draw graphical representations in form of graphs, data or pictures so that
data might be understood and represented clearly (AlHouli and Al-Khayatt, 2020). Moreover,
this technique is useful in making difference in lives of students through better remembrance of
small details especially beneficial for the visual learners. Thus, draw and sketch is powerful
method for those who want to remember large data in the easiest manner.

Read again and again: Under this technique the students read large amount of data
continuously in speed so that better understanding might be developed. Also, it is known that
readers retains those informations more that are read on repeated manner. Moreover, it is good to
read at once for getting basic understanding so that it might be grasp more quickly. Furthermore,
it is important for those students that wants to make sense out of the paragraphs or contents
through checking it on regular basis (Baig, Siddiquah and Javed, 2020). Also, through
continuous reading the user is able to summarize the information in better manner than others.
Thus, through following above four reading techniques students might be able to
understand large amount of information in well-defined manner. Moreover, adopting best
reading technique allows students in coping with difficult content in systematic manner. Also,
through best technique students are able to review and remember the content in the future.
Describing personal experience and reading habits.
This part of report is personal reflection on the reading technique that has been used by
me over the period. Also, I have analysed that I have skimming reading technique where I
generally read the main headings of the text without actually reading the whole content of it.
Moreover, based on this technique I have observed that sometimes in actual life situations I made
certain wrong interpretation or conclusions that also created negativity around me. However, I
have observed that through adopting this technique I have been able to save much of my time
that would otherwise not allow me to carry out other things in my daily routine work. Moreover,
reading both authentic and unauthentic have enabled me to become more independent reader
and developed my understanding level on much higher level. Also, the skimming technique have
allowed me to closely analysed the benefits that are associated with any piece of the content or
data. Although this reading technique used by me is good in certain aspects but even though it
had made be realized that it cannot be used over long period and thus need to be changed
(Attanasio and et.al., 2020). Also, using this method had made me realize that for any given
problem in the future I am not able to make possible solutions as I am known to very little
information related to any topic that is read earlier. Thus, this technique limits the overall
thinking and creativity of the students when needed to be applied in challenging situations.
Hence, to improve my this skimming technique I have decided that I would start reading
small paragraphs and observe minor details of informations on any subject matter so that more

clarity and summary out of the given content might be made. Also, I would try to avoid
distractions and would concentrate more on the given informations so that better analysis might
be made out of the given situation (Alizamar and et.al., 2018). Moreover, skimming would be
improved through detecting the main idea from first paragraphs so that reading become more
interesting and fun. Furthermore, I would improve through making habit of reading the small
content on daily basis so that better practice might be developed in due course of time to read
large amount of data in proper and well-mannered. Also, visuals representation might be used so
that better learning and remembrance of content might be done. Thus, these are some measures
that I find useful and would be applied by me to improve the current reading style to achieve
better and higher goals in the future.
CONCLUSION
From above report it can be concluded that there are various reading technique that had
enabled variety of students to understand and learn large amount of information at given point of
time. Moreover, study had given personal reflection on skimming reading technique that had
been used by me over the years along with identifying ways for the improvements.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
AlHouli, A. I. and Al-Khayatt, A. K. A., 2020. Assessing the Soft Skills Needs of Teacher
Education Students. International Journal of Education and Practice. 8(3). pp.416-431.
Alizamar, A. and et.al., 2018. Learning skills level on the young prisoners. International Journal
of Counseling and Education (Couns-Edu). 3(3). pp.86-92.
Attanasio, O., and et.al., 2020. Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort
comparison. Journal of Public Economics. 191. p.104171.
Baig, S., Siddiquah, A. and Javed, F., 2020. An analysis of the competency ‘reading and thinking
skills’ in Grade VIII English textbook. Global Social Sciences Review. 5(1). pp.231-240.
Bracewell, R. J., 2020. Investigating the control of writing skills. In Reading Empirical Research
Studies: The Rhetoric of Research (pp. 436-463). Routledge.
Villarreal, V. and Martinez, A., 2018. Assessing study skills in college students: A review of
three measures. Journal of College Student Development. 59(5). pp.629-635.