8 Tips You Can Use To Remember Whatever You Read

Despite tele­vi­sion, cell phones, and Web “twit­ter, forum, blog” tra­di­tional read­ing is still an impor­tant skill. Whether it is school text­books, tech man­u­als at work, or reg­u­lar books, peo­ple still read, though not as much as they used to. One rea­son that many peo­ple don’t read much is that they don’t read well. For them, it is slow, hard work and they don’t remem­ber as much as they should. Stu­dents, for example, may have to read some­thing sev­eral times before they under­stand and remem­ber what they read.

Why? You would think that schools teach kids how to read and remember well. Schools do try. I work with some teach­ers and they tell me that many stu­dents are 2–3 years behind grade level in read­ing pro­fi­ciency. No doubt, tele­vi­sion, video, games, cell phones, and the Web are major con­trib­u­tors to this prob­lem, which will appar­ently get worse if we don’t empha­size and improve read­ing instruction.

Some of the blame can be placed on the fads in read­ing teach­ing, such as phon­ics and “whole lan­guage,” which some­times are pro­moted by zealots who don’t respect the need for both approaches. Much of the blame for poor read­ing skills can be laid at the feet of par­ents who set poor exam­ples and, of course, on the young­sters who are too lazy to learn how to read well.

For all those who missed out on good read­ing skills, it is not too late. Read the summary below what it takes to read with good speed and comprehension.

1. Read with a pur­pose.
2. Skim first.
3. Get the read­ing mechan­ics right.
4. Be judi­cious in high­light­ing and note tak­ing.
5. Think in pic­tures.
6. Rehearse as you go along.
7. Stay within your atten­tion span and work to increase that span.
8. Rehearse again soon.

1) Know Your Purpose

You should have a pur­pose for your read­ing and think about how that pur­pose is being ful­filled dur­ing the actual read­ing. The advan­tage for remem­ber­ing is that check­ing con­tin­u­ously for how the pur­pose is being ful­filled helps you the reader to stay on task, to focus on the more rel­e­vant parts of the text, and to rehearse con­tin­u­ously as you read. This also saves you time and effort because rel­e­vant items are most attended.

Iden­ti­fy­ing the pur­pose should be easy if you freely choose what to read. Just ask your­self, “Why am I read­ing this?” If it is to be enter­tained or pass the time, then there is not much prob­lem. But myr­iad other rea­sons could apply, such as:

to under­stand a cer­tain group of peo­ple, such as Christian,Mus­lims, Jews, Hin­dus, etc. to crys­tal­lize your polit­i­cal posi­tion, such as why a given gov­ern­ment pol­icy should be opposed.
to develop an informed plan or pro­posal.
to sat­isfy a require­ment of an aca­d­e­mic course or other assigned reading.

Many of us have read­ings assigned to us, as in a school envi­ron­ment. Or the boss may hand us a man­ual and say “Here. We need you to read this.” Whether the order comes from a teacher or boss, we need to ask, “What do you want me to learn from this?” In the absence of such guid­ance, you should still for­mu­late your best guess about what you should learn and remem­ber from the reading.

2) Skim First

Some read­ing tasks require no more than skim­ming. Proper skim­ming includes putting an empha­sis on the head­ings, pic­tures, graphs, tables, and key para­graphs (which are usu­ally at the begin­ning and the end). Depend­ing on the pur­pose, you should slow down and read care­fully only the parts that con­tribute to ful­fill­ing the read­ing purpose.

Even mate­r­ial that has to be stud­ied care­fully should be skimmed first. The ben­e­fits of skim­ming first are that the skim­ming: 1) primes the mem­ory, mak­ing it eas­ier to remem­ber when you read it the sec­ond time, 2) ori­ents the think­ing, help­ing you to know where the impor­tant con­tent is in the doc­u­ment, 3) cre­ates an over­all sense and gestalt for the doc­u­ment, which in turn makes it eas­ier to remem­ber cer­tain particulars.

Brows­ing on the Inter­net encour­ages peo­ple to skim read. The way con­tent is han­dled on the Web is even caus­ing writ­ers to make wider use of Web devices, such as num­bered or bul­leted lists, side­bars, graph­ics, text boxes and side­bars. But the bad news is that the Web style makes it even harder to learn how to read in-depth; that is, the Web teaches us to skim, cre­at­ing bad read­ing habits for in-depth reading.

3) Get the Mechan­ics Right

For in-depth read­ing, eyes need to move in a dis­ci­plined way. Skim­ming actu­ally trains eyes to move with­out dis­ci­pline. When you need to read care­fully and remem­ber the essence of large blocks of text, the eyes must snap from one fix­a­tion point to the next in left– to right-sequence. More­over, the fix­a­tions should not be one indi­vid­ual let­ters or even sin­gle words, but rather on sev­eral words per fix­a­tion. There are reading-improvement machines that train the eyes to fix­ate prop­erly, but few schools use them. I know from per­sonal expe­ri­ence with such machines that they can increase read­ing speed markedly with­out a cost in lower com­pre­hen­sion. Poor read­ers who stum­ble along from word to word actu­ally tend to have lower com­pre­hen­sion because their mind is pre­oc­cu­pied with rec­og­niz­ing the let­ters and their arrange­ment in each word.That is a main rea­son they can’t remem­ber what they read. Count­less times I have heard col­lege stu­dents say, “I read that chap­ter three times, and I still can’t answer your ques­tions.” When I ask thought-provoking ques­tions about the mate­r­ial, they often can’t answer the ques­tions because they can’t remem­ber the mean­ing of what they read. Even with straight­for­ward sim­ple mem­o­riza­tion ques­tions, they often can’t remem­ber, because their focus on the words them­selves kept them from asso­ci­at­ing what their eyes saw with their own pre-existing knowl­edge and thus facil­i­tat­ing remem­ber­ing. In short, to remem­ber what you read, you have to think about what the words mean.

I am not argu­ing against phon­ics, which in my view is vital for the ini­tial learn­ing of how to read. But phon­ics is just the first step in good read­ing prac­tice. At some point, the reader needs to rec­og­nize whole words as com­plete units and then expand that capa­bil­ity to clus­ters of sev­eral words.

Among the key tac­tics for good mechan­ics of read­ing, I list the following:

o Make eye con­tact with all the text not being delib­er­ately skimmed
o See mul­ti­ple words in each eye fix­a­tion
o Strive to expand the width of each eye fix­a­tion (on an 8.5″ width, strive for three fix­a­tions or even­tu­ally two per line). This skill has to be devel­oped in stages. First, learn how do read at five or six fix­a­tions per line. Then work on four per line. Then three.
o Snap eyes from one fix­a­tion point to another (hor­i­zon­tal snaps on long lines, ver­ti­cal snap if whole line in a col­umn can be seen with one fixation).

Learn­ing how to do this takes prac­tice. If you can’t do it on your own, con­sider for­mal train­ing from a read­ing center.

4) Be Judi­cious in High­light­ing and Note Taking

Use a high­lighter to mark a FEW key points to act as the basis for men­tal pic­tures and reminder cues. Add key words in the mar­gins if you don’t find use­ful clues to highlight.

Almost all stu­dents use high­lighter pens to iden­tify key parts of a text. But many stu­dents either high­light too much or high­light the wrong things. They become so pre­oc­cu­pied in mark­ing up the book that they don’t pay enough atten­tion to what they are read­ing. A bet­ter approach is to high­light just a few key words on a page. If many pages don’t require high­lights, sticky tabs on pages with high­lights can greatly speed a study process for whole books.

It is cru­cial to think about the mean­ing of text. High­lighted text needs to be rehearsed in the con­text of how it fits with the pur­pose, why it needs to be remem­bered, and how it fits with impor­tant mate­r­ial that pre­ceded it. Every few para­graphs or pages, depend­ing on the infor­ma­tion den­sity, the reader should stop and self-quiz to make sure the impor­tant mate­r­ial is being mem­o­rized. Mak­ing out­line notes of such mate­r­ial after it is first read can be an impor­tant rehearsal aid for form­ing imme­di­ate mem­ory and for later study. The act of cre­at­ing such an out­line from work­ing mem­ory, and check­ing it against the con­tent just read, sup­ports mem­ory for­ma­tion in very pow­er­ful ways.

5) Think in Pictures

A pic­ture may not be worth a thou­sand words, but it can cer­tainly cap­ture the essence of dozens of words. More­over, pic­tures are much eas­ier to mem­o­rize than words. Those mem­ory wiz­ards who put on stage shows owe their suc­cess (as do card coun­ters in casi­nos) to use of gim­micks based on men­tal pic­tures. Ordi­nary read­ers can use to good effect the prac­tice of mak­ing men­tal images of the mean­ing of text. The high­lighted key words in text, for exam­ple, if used as a start­ing point for men­tal pic­tures, then become very use­ful for mem­o­riza­tion. One only has to spot the key words and think of the asso­ci­ated men­tal images. Some­times it helps to make men­tal images of head­ings and sub-heads. Pic­tures also become eas­ier to remem­ber when they are clus­tered into sim­i­lar groups or when they are chained together to tell a story.

Men­tal pic­tures are not the only way to facil­i­tate mem­ory for what you read. I under­stand that actors use another approach for mem­o­riz­ing their lines for a play, movie, or TV show. Actors “get into the part” and study the mean­ing of the script in depth, which seems to pro­duce mem­ory auto­mat­i­cally for them. When the same script is mem­o­rized with men­tal images, it appears that the text is being looked at from the out­side, as some­thing to be mem­o­rized. Actors, on the other hand, appear to be look­ing at the same text from the inside, as some­thing to be expe­ri­enced. The actors probe the deep mean­ing of the text, which inevitably involves attend­ing to the exact words. For exam­ple, they seem to explore why their char­ac­ter would use a given set of word­sto express a par­tic­u­lar thought. This is still a process of asso­ci­a­tion, except that actors are asso­ci­at­ing words with real mean­ing and con­text as opposed to con­trived visual image mean­ing and context.

Both approaches require engage­ment. The reader has to think hard about what is being read, and that is what helps you to remem­ber what is read. As a test to prove my point, after you have go back and look at the seven pieces of clip art in this arti­cle. Notice how quickly you can mem­o­rize the clips. Then sur­prise your­self at how much they help you remem­ber about the asso­ci­ated sec­tion of this article.

6) Rehearse As You Go Along

Read in short seg­ments (a few para­graphs to a few pages, depend­ing on con­tent den­sity), all the while think­ing about and para­phras­ing the mean­ing of what is written.

To rehearse what you are mem­o­riz­ing, see how many of the men­tal pic­tures you can recon­struct. Use head­ings and high­lighted words if needed to help you rein­force the men­tal pic­tures. Rehearse the men­tal pic­tures every day or so for the first few days after reading.

Think about the con­tent in each seg­ment in terms of how it sat­is­fies the pur­pose for read­ing. Ask your­self ques­tions about the con­tent. “How does this infor­ma­tion fit what I already know and don’t know? Why did the author say that? Do I under­stand what this means? What is the evi­dence? Do I agree with ideas or con­clu­sions? Why or why not? What is the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion?” How much of this do I need to mem­o­rize?” Apply the ideas to other sit­u­a­tions and con­texts. Gen­er­ate ideas about the content.

It also helps to focus on what is not said. To do that you also have to keep in work­ing mem­ory what was said. This not only helps mem­ory, but you get the oppor­tu­nity to gain cre­ative insights about the sub­ject. In short, think­ing not only pro­motes mem­ory for­ma­tion but also understanding.

7) Oper­ate Within Your Atten­tion Span

Pay­ing atten­tion is cen­tral to mem­o­riza­tion. Try­ing to read when you can’t con­cen­trate is wast­ing time. Since most peo­ple have short atten­tion spans, they should not try to read dense mate­r­ial for more than 10 or 15 min­utes at a time. After such a ses­sion, they should take a break and quiz them­selves on what they just read.

Ulti­mately, read­ers should dis­ci­pline their atten­tion so they can con­cen­trate for longer periods.

 Rehearse Soon After Read­ing Is Finished

At the read­ing ses­sion end, rehearse what you learned right away. Avoid dis­trac­tions and multi-tasking because they inter­fere with the con­sol­i­da­tion processes that enable longer-term mem­ory. Answer again the ques­tions about con­tent men­tioned in the “Rehearse As You Go Along” section.

Think about and rehearse what you read at least twice later that day. Rehearse again at last once for the next 2–3 days.

In Sum­mary

1. Read with a pur­pose.
2. Skim first.
3. Get the read­ing mechan­ics right.
4. Be judi­cious in high­light­ing and note tak­ing.
5. Think in pic­tures.
6. Rehearse as you go along.
7. Stay within your atten­tion span and work to increase that span.
8. Rehearse again soon.