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Reading Effectively PowerPoint Slides

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10 views

Reading Effectively PowerPoint Slides

Uploaded by

Kunal Gupta
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Effective Reading

Top tips and strategies for effective reading in the Arts and Humanities
Time management – budgeting time to read

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• How
• Why
Different types of academic reading material…
• Monograph (book, usually by a single author)
• Edited volume (book with chapters by several authors and usually edited
by one or more people to ensure consistency
• Journal – a collection of short ‘essays’ (usually around 9-11,000 words);
online or hard/print copy
• Prefaces to collections of things; facsimiles of sources / music scores
• Primary Sources…..
But at the end of the day…it’s just words?
• We approach texts in different ways dependent upon what they are
• Passive Reading vs. ‘Technical How-to…’ reading vs. critical reading…
• What are you reading and for what purpose? General knowledge on a
topic (the French Revolution) vs Cahusac’s libretti for Rameau’s operas
and their allusions to Freemasonry in pre-revolutionary France.
• Read widely, but you don’t have to read everything: selecting your reading
material according to your purpose.
• Active reading: to critically engage with the text: who, what, why, where,
when, how…
Prioritising what to read when…

Must Do Should Do

Could Do Nice to Do
Anatomy of reading material
Abstract – Summary of what the thing is about

Introduction – Presentation of a problem/question, along with context

Main Body – Presentation of evidence relating to the authors’ solution to the


problem/answer to the question. Usually broken down into ‘sections’ with a particular
facet examined and evidence presented for and against this as the solution

Conclusion – A summary of the author’s findings and statements of conclusion

References – The sources considered in the production of this piece of academic


literature.
Strategies for Reading
Read the Introduction, pause, read the conclusion. Ask – is this material relevant
to the question I’m answering, does it present the same or an alternative view and
does the author do what they’ve set out to do?

Read the main body of the work, buy using the Pomodoro technique. Don’t take
notes at this point. As you’re unfamiliar with the work, you’ll take ‘too many’ notes.
If there are things you want to highlight, use sticky notes or the on-line marker
tool

Rest and ‘forget’ the work

Revisit this and start to take notes form the points where you’ve highlighted.
Reading using the Pomodoro Technique
- Pick your priority and set this against SMART Goals (to avoid any
duplication and also to work-out exactly what you need to do; this may not
be what you’d like to do
- Identify small goals of 20 minutes and then time yourself (or better with a
friend) work in learning sets of 20 minutes
- Repeat and take breaks, reflecting upon how successfully your meeting
each goal and the direction you’re heading with the larger overall goal
- At the end of the sets, articulate what’s next.
Reading and Note Taking when I’m running out of time…
Essential vs. desirable reading: one of each if running short of time and then three key
questions for clarification in academic student hours

General overview texts to gain an insight into a topic: Oxford VSI

Deconstructing reading: Introduction – Conclusion (evaluate) – main body – then take


notes limited to one side of A4 and / or a relative number of words: not verbatim

Speed reading strategies relative to how the article / reading is constructed: examples /
quotes and summary sentences are land-marks to look out for.

Study-buddy/ies? borrow notes from a friend?


Feedback Opportunity

https://forms.office.com/r/rzJeyhjAH2

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