How can you make reading an active process?

Let’s assume, now, that you’ve found a relevant book, and tracked down the relevant information in it. Suppose you’re now in the business of studying the book, rather than just reading things in it.

What’s the main danger? It is reading page after page, and just as quickly forgetting all about what you’ve read. It’s quite easy to read something and understand it at the time, but it can be another matter to be able to recall, discuss, and apply the things you’ve just read.

Books tend to be longwinded. You can’t possibly “learn” all your books! So, you need to extract from the books things suitable for you to learn.

I’m not going to spell it all out here - because it’s simply a case of “making learning tools” as you read. My study skills guide on  “Making Learning Tools” explains how to use question-banks, summaries and mnemonics to help you learn what you need to. The important thing to decide is “what you need to learn’’ from each book. It won’t be the whole book.

You’ll soon pick up the skills of being able to track down which parts of a book particularly lend themselves to your purpose of making learning tools. For example, the summary at the end of a chapter may have quite enough detail in it for your purpose – you may only need to glance through most of the chapter itself.

As you can see, there’s quite a difference between reading-to-learn, and just reading. Reading for the sake of it is still one of your options, of course. The main thing is not to kid yourself that you’re actually doing productive work, if you’re reading passively. Passive reading is a luxury to be enjoyed when you know you’ve done sufficient work for the day!

To sum up, productive reading is an active process. You need pen and paper to make learning tools as you read. The question “do I need to remember this?” should be permanently in your mind when you read. Whenever the answer is “yes”, a question, or a summary, will help you to record what you need to remember, and give you the chance to test how much you remember.