Reading and note taking preparation for study
So far we have looked at how to highlight key ideas in the text itself and how to use the highlighted bits to create short notes and summaries. Identifying and extracting important points will take you a long way, but this is not yet really active reading. You are making judgements about what is important to select, but you are not yet actively working on what you have read. The next stage, then, is to begin to take the ideas into your thoughts, make your own sense of them, and begin to ‘talk to’ what you are reading: check you understand the main points; see how they relate to your own experience; think up other examples that may illustrate them; see how they stand up to questioning; and sometimes query them or begin to put forward criticisms. This is about reading and thinking.
