Oak Park High School

Study Skills

Written Notes

Letting your eyes glide across the lines of a book won’t give you an understanding of what you have read.  However, filling the pages with thoughtful notes may be an active way of getting involved with your reading.  The physical act of writing brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in our memory.  It is important that notes be in your own words and from memory.  You can write in the margins (including the top and bottom of the pages), back and front papers and the space between the lines.  After you finish reading, make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance on the back end papers.  On the front papers, make an outline of the book, not page by page or point by point, but as an integrated structure with a basic unit and order or parts.  These marks and notes, with all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubts and inquiry, become an integral part of the book.  If you can’t mark the book use a small scratch pad for your notes and insert the sheet in the book.

Underlining

Underline only after you have a predetermined section of the material.  Never underline a whole sentence.  Instead, underline major points and important or forceful phrases by picking out words which summarize the content.  A great deal of underlining can be deceptive in that a completely underlined chapter gives one the impression that something has been accomplished.  In reality, this can be one of the least efficient methods of study.  The student who underlines most of the material has not given much thought to what he/she has read.

Other Devices for Marking a Book

1. Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
2. Star, asterisk, or other symbol at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book.  (You may want to fold the bottom corner of each page on which you use such marks.  It won’t hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able to take the book off the shelf at any time, and by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
3. Number in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points that the author makes in developing a single argument.
4. Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
5. Circling of key words or phrases
6. Writing in the margin or at the top or bottom of the page for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the book.

Textbook Studying Guides

Study reading is unlike casual fiction reading.  You must know what you are reading for; you must be able to organize the ideas and connect them with what has gone before.  You must be able to relate ideas to knowledge and experience you have already gained.  Most crucial beyond comprehension, the student is expected to remember the essential ideas, facts, and supporting material.  Even when you are reading, concurrent (happens at the same time) forgetting will erase at least 50 percent and this will be reduced further unless some kind of recitation-review takes place immediately.  In as much as our reading needs must include remembering as well as comprehension, the following study approach is offered.  It includes:

1. SURVEY                 AND Question (general questions)

2. STUDY READ        AND Question (continuously)

3. RECITE                   AND Self-Question                              AND Write

4. REVIEW                 VIA Questions