Month: January 2023

In chapter five of “outsmart your brain” from Daniel T. Willingham I learned how to read a text right and how to remember things easier. I thought I already new how to read and remember Textes but Willingham showed that I was completely wrong. For example: I am using the highlighter method by highlighting the most important stuff do the text. Researches have tested students by letting them all read and highlight the same text. Every student highlighted something else, some more and some less. So it shows that highlighting stuff in a text is a horrible plan because you will most likely not highlight the real important stuff or other unimportant things. I learned how to read a textbook and that its good it have an strategy of reading a text. May inform yourself about things in the text. It’s important to read and understand every single sentences of a text to understand the whole thing. Think about your goal and what you expect and want to know after you read the text. By textbooks its also important to connect some part. Textbooks are not that organized like storybooks which makes them way harder to read. Storybooks follow the actions and the material in textbooks are hierarchically, so you need to connect sentences you read right now to sentences you read a few pages ago. It also can help you to take notes while reading a text or research some parts you may not completely get. For remembering a text completely you may write a summary in your own words. After reading through all your notes you can make sure you understood everything. One of the most important things are also to read slow and reread the text a few times to remember and understand everything. In the end I learned really much from Willingham and I will try to take his advices for my learning in the future.

In this chapter I found the most useful parts for me were the strategies I do not I do not perform and the mistakes I never knew were mistakes. For example, I learned that just highlighting and reading is a bad strategy to help comprehend a text. The reason for this is because if I am learning a new subject, which happens often, I am not aware of the most important parts of the text and could be highlighting the wrong things because I am unaware of the framework of the text therefore have little basis for reasoning.

I also learned a solution to this new problem of mine. To improve my comprehension and avoid just reading and highlighting I can use the SQ3R method. S stands for survey. Meaning go over the headings and skim the txt to get a basic understanding. The Q stands for question. This instructs you to ask questions based on your survey or the headings and general text. Then read the text with your goal to answer the questions and basic understanding of the topic. Recite each section and see if it relates to the questions posed. Review your notes by summarizing the questions you chose. Doing all of this will help with my reading comprehension and further my learning.

One of the most interesting things I learned in the book Out Smart Your Brain by Daniel T. Willingham in chapter 5, is the facts that many students read with out understanding the context of what they are reading. Willingham said that many students think that if they understand what each individual sentence is saying, they will understand the whole book. He then gave an example paragraph with a sentence that contradicts what was being stated and said that many students miss that mistake when rating the clearness of the paragraph. I have discovered I do that too when I am reading something that I find dull and boring.

A reading strategy he gave to try and help this issue is called SQ3R. This strategy outlines a technique that try’s to maximize the amount of knowledge you retain. Although this technique may work to retain knowledge and help you understand the concepts more, it is very time consuming and has many steps involved. Even if it does help you understand the reading, I can not see my self using this strategy in a general setting. The only occasion I would think about using this strategy is if there is a very long and complex text that I am having difficulty understanding and a lack of understanding will cause bigger problems. The reason I would only use this strategy if I had too, is because it takes a lot of effort, time, and would demotivate me to read the book.  I did however learn a new strategy from reading this book, that if needed, I can implement to help me understand written texts more efficiently.

What I learned in Outsmart Your Brain by Daniel Willingham’s, chapter 5, is that they are many ways for us individuals to read a book the right way. It was a very interesting book to read, as well as extremely useful. It made me aware of my usual mistakes when it comes to reading comprehension and note taking.

Normally, I surprise myself being easily distracted when studying, but this book showed me other ways to ‘avoid’ this, and to be more focused while studying, surprisingly without it sounding tedious or boring. I like the strategies shown because it erases the habit of just reading, and it actually makes your brain pay attention to what it’s been said to keep going with it, in order to learn more. One of the tips that I already knew about is Tip 28: Take Notes as you Read. Usually when I read I forget all the information the next day. But since I stared applying this tip now I remember what I read and its more easy for me and I understand better the text.

What I’ve learned about Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make it Easy, by Danielle T. Willingham. Chapter 5. That it is really easy and effective to read text the correct way. I learned that I have been reading texts the wrong way because as I read I have to take notes to memorize and remember better. Another mistake that I have is that when I start reading without looking for subtitles, headings, quotes among others. To make the information easier I can search for definitions of words that I don’t know and highlight the most important paragraphs, but he says “how do you know that is the most important part” He explains how we can know and he gives us tips in how to improve. Thought the book I noticed various mistakes that I have to improve.

First, you need to read slowly to connect what you read a few minutes ago and what you are reading now. People usually summarize each chapter but he says we have to summarize each paragraph. This is for not leaving small details outside. I really enjoyed how easy it was to read this book and how it will help me improve future readings.

What I’ve learned from Outsmart Your Brain, by Daniel T. Willingham. Mostly, that I’ve been reading articles wrong. Willingham writes, and rewrites, and rewrites, that simply reading something and highlighting it the first time around is not a good plan to avoid taking notes, or to retain the information. Willingham brings up several reading strategies, but the one that I found the most practical was SQ3R. In a way, these two paragraphs are my attempt at the recite and review parts of it. I like to think that I already ask questions to myself questions when I read to learn, and when I read to read. In this case though, when I got to tip 27, I realized I hadn’t been thinking at all while reading the previous pages. My mind hadn’t been wandering, I just wasn’t thinking about the words on the page.

Another thing that I learned while reading the chapter, was that I tend to start skimming pages when I get bored of whatever I am reading. I also tend to not review my notes unless I need to answer a question quickly and without thinking too much about it. Honestly my study habits just kind of suck. I always knew that my study habits were… less than great, but reading this chapter has really put into perspective how bad they are. Working forward, I want to set more goals relating to study habits for myself.

Outsmart Your Brain by Daniel T. Willingham, PhD. The book talks about easy and effective ways for an individual to read a book the “right way”.  

The soluction is to set a concrete task as you read. The best known is called SQ3R (p. 95)

Learning that are ways to concentrate better whilst reading is what I am writing about.

Survey: Skim the reading, looking at the headings, subheading, and figures. Get a rough idea of what it’s about. This is how you’ll determine, for example, that an article about the Human Genome Project is about its economic consequences, not the ethical implications of sequencing human DNA. (p. 95)

The mistake I was doing according to the book is reading straight away and not looking over the skim through pages looking for headings, subheading, and figures and to ask questions about them if there are questions to ask.

Read: Keeping in mind the rough idea of the article’s content you developed when you surveyed the reading, it’s time to actually read. And now you have a concrete take to be completed as you read: look for information that answers the questions you’ve posed. (p. 96)

Before you begin the book you want to ask questions that may be answered along the way or that you may ask after each section or chapter.

Recite: When you’ve finished each section, recite what you’ve learned as if you were describing it to someone else. Summarize it and decide if it answers any of your questions. (p. 96)

Instead of summerizing after each chapter, summerize after each paragraph to process the information better without most likely forgetting some minor details.

Review: Reviewing is meant to be an ongoing process in which you revisit the content, focusing especially on the questions posed and the answers you derived. (p. 96)

Constantly reviewing is better than reading and reading without stopping because important things can just fly over your head.

Another thing I learned is that speed reading is not a thing. I’m a slow reader which I was ashamed of untill i read

speed reading is not a thing. (p. 101)

Knowing that I can read slowly to understand material better makes me feel better about it.

In this chapter, Daniel Willingham denies all I have done so far to read the books. Read, highlight the sentences that I think are important, and search the definitions of vocabulary words that I do not know. However, it does not assist us in comprehending deeply. How do we know the sentences we highlighted are the most important? How will we be able to use new vocabularies simply by writing their definitions? Throughout this chapter, I found a lot of things that I needed to improve to obtain reading strategies.

First, we need to connect what we are reading right now to what we read a few minutes ago, because sentences can take on quite different meanings depending on the surrounding context. That’s why highlighting does not work. People try to focus on only the highlighted sentences without the context. That means people might not comprehend correctly. They can interpret arbitrarily for themselves. To avoid this, we need to think about and set the goal of reading instead of highlighting. Acquire the basic knowledge and pose further questions about the topic. I think by doing these, we can pay more attention, gain interest, and make it easier to input the context, even if it is difficult to understand. And we should take a note on laptop to make it easy to look up information. It should include the summary and answer one of the questions that you posed. And you need to confirm if it can really help you refresh your memory later.

I learned a lot of strategies comprehending deeply and I am convinced of all of them. They all make sense to me, as I wrote above. However, there is one thing that I thought was wrong.” Teachers are ready to assign a textbook, even if it’s boring; it’s seen as a regrettable but unavoidable problem.”(p.90). Students might think the textbooks are  boring. But, the teachers are the only person who should not think it’s boring. I think the teachers have to believe it’s interesting. The teachers might think that we don’t know their enthusiasm. But we know. The teachers should love the topics and want to teach them to the students. This leads students to learn with better environment and enthusiasm.

While reading this chapter, I must admit to doing some of the things Willingham advises against. One of these being Tip 26: Just Read and Highlight. In response to this, he recommends using the SQ3R method: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review. I have never heard of this before, and typically stick to highlighting and reviewing, and messily attempt a quick study method. I believe that with this new technique, I have a cogent method that does not leave me scrambling to understand a certain text or reading.

Another method newly discovered is Tip 28: Take Notes As You Read. This specific tip entails writing notes during readings of texts, rather than reading the text as is. I find that I understand a topic better when I write it down or have something separate from the text to look back to, so I have confidence in this tip. Willingham provides a structure for your notes, which I believe will help. This is due to my tendency of having unfinished notes, and only going over the text itself.

In chapter 5 of Daniel Willingham’s Outsmart Your Brain, we come to the realization of numerous habits we do when studying advanced texts. He outlines poor practices we do subconsciously, and ways we can improve the effects of those habits. As an example, Willingham speaks on how our brain interprets the more complex information that we read. He notes that our brain is unlikely to automatically connect ideas from different sections in a textbook, as we are new to the subject and our brain is not looking for any connections, but rather trying to consume all the information without analyzing it. Another point I found fascinating was when Willingham explains that our brain reads these assigned textbooks in the same way we read for amusement. The first time we read a text, we are able to point out simple errors- as we would in a novel- but fail to make an in-depth analysis of the topic. Tying onto that, on page 91 Willingham writes “if readers simply understand each sentence on its own, they figure they are doing what they’re supposed to do.”. I found that statement rather impactful as it hadn’t occurred to me before, but is certainly a habit I possess. And while talking on all of these poor reading habits we have, Willingham suggests strategies that can be used for improvement.

One point that is repeated frequently is the use of questions. Willingham notes that simply asking questions prior to reading a text can help you focus on the more “hidden” details of a text. He recommends using headings (and subheadings) to help guide you when creating these inquiries. He also emphasizes the use of having a set of tasks or goals before reading a text, these could be seperate from the questions, or be the questions themselves! Lastly, Willingham points out the use of notes, highlighting, and any other stratagy someone may use to help them interpret a text. He says that different strategies work for different individuals but most importantly, “using a strategy is better than not using one.” (p. 97).

This short chapter held lots of potential for someone like myself to further explore the world of detailed reading, especially when trying to improve their studying habits.

Nyah Sharratt – 01/30

This charapter is titled “How to read difficult books”, and I honestly think this is something we all have asked ourselves, but never really felt the need to think more in debt about it. Which is why I found this incredibly helpful and interesting. It really does gives us real tips and advise. First, the author introduced us to the concept of reading a hard book, and talks about how it really is difficult and most importantly, why. I liked how he later explained what happens in our brain and how we can “outsmart it”. He went in debt about the common errors, what we usually do, what and how to change it.

I do have to say that even if i did found it very helpful, and i will consider it in my future readings, I already did some of the stuff he talks about. Like highlighting and taking notes, but he did made me rethink how I do it and what information should I prioritize.

At the end, the thing i definitely founded the most interesting was the reading techniques. I feel like applying them will change the reading experience for me.

By reading a part of the book “Outsmart Your Brain” By Daniel T. Willingham, I have learned a lot of things – How to read a “difficult” book, to be specific.  In the first two pages of the book, the author, Daniel, introduces the idea of reading a “hard” book and acknowledges the struggle and the level of effort that would have to be put in to accomplish such a thing. He then introduces the readers to a text, which is most likely a part of a “hard” book the author claims to be. He then asks if anyone notices a contradiction between the former and latter claims. Through this, I have learned that I have not been reading a text to its utmost detail for all this time, although I thought I did.  Reading this part of the book gave me the curiosity to continue reading.

As the book progresses and moves onto the next topic of how to read a “hard” book, The author now gives the readers tips on how to do so. He mentions the act of highlighting, which is widely practiced as a method of close reading. However, the author Daniel opposes this idea, claiming that it is inefficient and that there is no point in doing such. He claims that people reading for the first time; are most likely to highlight a text they believe to be predominant, even if it doesn’t have any relevance to the main topic it is discussing. He states that first-time readers are not to judge whether part of the text is relevant. He adds to the argument and suggests a new method, taking notes. When we listen to lectures and classes, we are bound to naturally think and assume its content to be not amusing, boring or difficult. It is the same for books. When we read a hard book, we tend to assume its content, even before reading the actual text; we tend to skim through the book, not knowing the hidden details and important information.  Daniel states that by taking notes, our brain can process more content simultaneously by organizing them and making them easier to understand.

Books are not always fun, especially if you are reading a book that you assume is hard. However, when you force yourself to read more, you tend to get into a habit of reading, and you get more content in a shorter time, which makes your reading skills more efficient. From personal experience, I have never really enjoyed reading, until I forced myself to read over and over again and explore more books at the bookshop. By doing this, I have found a book I enjoy reading – and I tend to read it – regardless of the duty of reading every day, for 15 minutes. This reminder has become a habit, and I find myself reading – for more than 15 minutes before I even realize the independent reading task. In my background of being raised bilingually, It has been such a struggle to master both languages, with pretty good fluency. My parent would speak in Korean on one day, and English on the other. I did the same with books. Korean on the first day, English on the second. By doing this, I was able to improve both my Korean and English skills, and I believe I can speak both languages fluently. However, I have a lot to learn, and this book has shown me how to read more confidently and efficiently.

When reading the chapter 5 of “Outsmart Your Brain” By Daniel T. Willingham, it taught me a a couple of things that I should do, but also not do. Things I was actually surprised by, and things that I have noticed already help me. I enjoyed how easy it was to follow along the book, and how it taught me how to efficiently do my work. I feel I have a better understanding and will comprehend texts better if doing the tips he has given.

The thing that surprised me the most was to not highlight you pages or certain parts of the text you are reading. He had mentioned not to do this because you do not know if you are highlighting the correct information. “How can you be sure you are highlighting the most important information” (pg. 93). This was mentioned by him, and after i read it, it made more sense to me. Even though I do mostly highlight key things that I notice, I might not be including the most important part of it, or I might be missing something. The second thing that was helpful, but I did already know, was taking notes. I already take notes depending on how knowledgable I am with the topic or book I am reading about, but it never hurts to have extra notes for later on if you get confused or forget what happened at a specific time in the text. And last is writing a summery after each sub heading. If you right a summery it will help you retain more and understand what is happening. Doing this in the future could really help me in tests to become more aware and efficient with my words to understand. Especially if you have many things to remember at once, writing a small summery on what it is, or what it is about could really help me. And writing something causes your brain to remember better and more efficiently than just reviewing over and over again but still mixing the information up.

Overall, I think I will be doing these tips in the future to help me understand large quantities of information better, and to learn more and more and grow not only my vocabulary, but also my knowledge.

Chapter five of Willingham’s Outsmart your brain is titled How to read difficult books. Although he doesn’t give a straight up answer “this is how to read a difficult book”, he does give some useful tips and advice. He started the chapter off by stating how teachers are willing to give us textbooks that go very in depth in a subject even if it is boring or doesn’t always help us. Teachers may think it would help us, giving us a long, in-depth explanation, but as many people say; “Quality over quantity”. Willingham also explains how most readers are less likely to notice if two sentences contradict each other, rather they notice a word they don’t understand. This can be caused by not understanding what individual sentences have in common with each other; it’s one thing to understand what an individual sentence means, but if you can’t understand the big picture, that’s when it becomes a problem.

A tip or piece of advice Willingham gives us is to not highlight the “important stuff” while reading, but rather take notes, unless you are already familiar with the subject. By doing so, we can memorize faster and have a better understanding of the main idea. If we simply highlight what we deem important or significant, we will most likely miss something important, or not be highlighting the important information. He says by finding a reading tool that works for us will also help us read difficult books. For example; the KWL tool, thinking of something you KNOW, something you WANT to know/learn, and something you’ve learned. This tool works best for me because it helps me organize my thoughts well and can help me summarize what I know or what I’ve learned.

The last tip he gave us that I thought was important, was to make sure we create time every day for reading. Not just to read 15 minutes anytime of the day, but at a time when we have the right mindset to read and absorb information. Of course, there will be times where we will have other priorities, but we have to remember that there’s no such thing as speed reading; aka skimming for the “important stuff”. If you do miss your scheduled reading time, don’t just go to a website with a summary in the place of reading the text; instead find the time another day. Learning aids/summaries of texts will not make your understanding better because it won’t have all the information you need; it will be whatever that writer thought was important, not your thoughts.

Chapter 5 of Outsmart your brain by Daniel T. Willingham made me overthink constantly repeated think and questions and careful that I got trapped in my own thinking. It is very tiring to be reminded of all the same information all over again and again. But that’s how it works for me (usually). Even if it’s annoying to listen to it, it is stuck in my brain and after some days, I unconsciously do what they said and described. And that’s how I believe in this book.

There was not very much that I did not already know somehow. For example the highlighting. When I read my old highlighted texts and already know the whole topic, I saw myself highlighting weird and unimportant information. The thing I learned and will try to use is to make topic questions. I noticed that when a teacher said an important question at the beginning of a lesson, it became much easier to remember the topics with all the details.

What I never heard about before were strategies for reading. And there is a lot of them. I did not cache a lot from Tip 27 and needed to read it a few times, translate words I did not know, and summarize it slowly to myself. It is a skill I never really used because it is very time-consuming and my brain hurts just thinking about it.

Reading Daniel T. Wellingham’s Outsmart Your Brain was rather an eye opening experience. The fifth chapter on what to do and what not to do when reading a difficult book, say a textbook,  is rather simple but hard to execute. To understand textbooks you must understand how they are structured, because unlike storybooks, textbooks are not structured in a chronological order, but a collection of ideas, linking one to another. Making minimal efforts to understand a book won’t get you very far, especially if it is a text with topics you are unfamiliar with.

This chapter emphasizes what you should and shouldn’t do whilst reading a text. One of the key takeaways I learned from this chapter was not to highlight, which is a habit I do as well. Find an important looking sentence? Highlight that! Find a new word I have never heard of? Highlight the term and definition! At the end, the entirety of the handout I was assigned to read is filled with different neon colours. On the surface, highlighting seems logical and effective, but it is explained that most times, the highlighted parts aren’t even the most important information. The only time you should be highlighting texts is when you are familiar with the text’s subject, which most times I am not.

After reading Chapter 5 of Outsmart Your Brain by Dr. Daniel T. Willingham, I learned about three strategies that I can use to successfully comprehend information from a reading material by looking over the reading before I read it, posing questions as reading goals, and by structuring my notes so I can stay on task as I read. The first strategy is to skim over the reading while taking notes of the reading’s learning aids (bolded words, main ideas, side bars, etc.), headings, and subheadings. Skimming over the reading material will help me understand what might be important in the reading by giving me some knowledge of what I’m about to read, and will also help me prepare for the other two strategies.

The second strategy is to make questions about the reading which I will answer in my notes as I read. One helpful tip I learned from Dr. Willingham is to make questions from the subheadings and headings of the reading. For example, if one of the headings is “The Effect of Global Warming on Emperor Penguins,” a question I could ask is “What is the effect of global warming on emperor penguins?” Now, after completing the first and second strategies, I know the basic topics of the reading material and I have questions to answer as I read, which serves as a reading goal. Finally, the third and final strategy is to take notes while I read. This involves splitting my notes into clear sections based on the reading’s headings and subheadings, writing down the questions I created in their corresponding sections, and writing down a summary after each subheading. The summaries may include the section’s main idea, its connection to the main section of the reading, and how the section answers at least one of my reading questions. Dr. Willingham also recommends for students to write down any new vocabulary words they have learned in their notes and to recite what they have learned out loud after completing the reading.

Dr. Willingham’s preferred reading strategies are known as the acronym SQ3R. The ‘S’ stands for ‘survey’ (skim the reading), the ‘Q’ stands for ‘question’ (pose questions), and the three ‘R’s stand for ‘read’, ‘recite’, and ‘review’ (take your notes as you read, recite out loud what you remember from the reading, and review your notes later). I plan to use the SQ3R strategy in the near and far future because it will train my brain to efficiently comprehend reading materials regarding a topic that I have little background knowledge on.

After reading “Outsmart your Brain” Chapter 5, I learned many things about reading and understanding difficult textbooks. I learned that textbook writers often organize the main ideas differently so the reader can affiliate them, making it challenging and boring for some. Meanwhile, most of the storybooks are written in a way that you can find and connect the ideas page by page, making it easy to understand. One of the most shocking things that I learned from this book is that highlighting is not the best option unless you know the topic well because, as the author says, “how can you be sure you are highlighting the most important information” (p. 93) it may be important for you but not for everyone. And this makes sense because everyone has different main ideas every time we have to highlight something in class on a textbook. A solution for this is taking notes while you are reading. 

I learned that taking notes while reading can help you memorize faster. By taking notes while reading, you are processing the necessary information and adapting it to your understanding, making it easy to learn and study later. Adding headings and subheadings with a small summary and about three statements may help organize your notes more, and adding questions to your notes may help. Asking a question such as “why…?” and answering them at the end can help to know if you took the notes needed. And lastly, read your notes after you finish reading to take refresh after all that new information. 

The book also mentions the other three methods to take good notes, “SQ3R, KWL, and SOAR” each of these methods can help me organize my notes better and get a better presentation and make them understandable. “KWL” will help me to ask the right questions and to look for the correct information. Meanwhile, “SQ3R” and “SOAR” will allow me to organize my notes.

When I read chapter 5 of Outsmart Your Brain by Daniel T. Willingham, I learned many new thing that will definitely help me in the future with my comprehension of texts and different strategies that will help me work efficiently. I enjoyed how easy his book was for me to read and understand, he made sense in what he was trying to tell us, and he made it very easy for us to learn new tips and tricks to help us in the future. He also told us what we shouldn’t do when reading, which is very helpful for me as I am not a confident reader.

The three biggest thing I learned from him are 1: reading and highlighting doesn’t work (unless it’s a topic that you already know very well). This surprised me when I read it because I usually always highlight the important information in texts and I thought that it helped me. His response after telling us this was that “how can you be sure you are highlighting the most important information” (p. 93) that’s when I realized unless its plainly written out as this is the most important information you never actually know if you are highlighting and remembering the correct information. 2: Taking notes with reading will help you stay focused and on task, it will also help you in remembering what happened in the text. This could be done on a laptop or on paper (Willingham suggested to use a laptop since it’s convenience with searching on the internet for words you aren’t familiar with) This is useful to me because I get distracted very easily when reading a book (especially if it’s a school related book) and if I start taking notes while I read this might help me focus and actually understand what I am reading. Lastly 3: After each subheading right a summary to remind you about the chapter. This seems very useful to me if you have a test coming up and you need to read part of a text. Writing a summery makes it so that you can retain the text better in your memory and that understand it better. You should write the summery about these three things, “an important qualification of the summery, a comment on how this section relates to the main section and, an implication of the summary for something else the author concluded.” (p. 99)

There was also many other things that I learned like how you shouldn’t plunge into texts without preparation, how to use SQ3R and many other techniques, that speed reading doesn’t work, how strategies with reading is a thing and how its important, and many more useful things that I will use in the future when reading a text, either to study, or just for fun.

In chapter 5 of willingham we are presented with some real world cases in which for example a textbook that seems hard to read. Once we read a bit more the chapter we realize that sometimes the solution is easier than we think. This also connects with some situations that we have all faced like when weread a book. This cahpter also adresses the familiar situation of being in a class and not knowing what to write in your notes. The book helps you identify the different mistakes that we make when it comes to reading and writing.

This chapter additionalluy makes us reflect on what we do while reading such as just highlighting the important parts. When we do this we dont really take in the information and on the long run we just forget what we read and use this technique throughout school life. We should also have in mind specific questions when we read like who are the characters and how they affect the plot.

Since English is not my first language, I had difficulty reading. It was hard to summarize, and I often forgot the contents of the text while reading. But I didn’t know exactly what to try, so I just mechanically highlighted some sentences Therefore, the advice given in the book is useful.
According to the book, it helps to understand the purpose of reading before just doing it. I used this method to read “The Brave New World.” I wrote down the questions in my notebook while reading the book, and filled in the answers to the questions by reading the following parts. As I repeated this process, I found that my notes were more organized. So far, all I’ve written has been a copy of what seems important. As advised in the book, the main content was easily seen as I read the article while checking the purpose.
In the book, it is said that it is not wrong to take time to read slowly rather than speed reading. Until now, it has become a habit to speed read books in my first language, so I have repeated the same behavior when I read English. I thought improving my English skills was the first priority, so I tried to make it seem like I was reading in my first language when I read English. But as advised in the book, taking the time to read was much more appropriate for me now. As I read the text slowly and organized it into notes, the contents were not mixed. Also, it helped me improve my English skills by searching for words I didn’t know in each sentence.

The section Allocate Significant Time to Reading, from Chapter 5 How to Read Difficult Books states, “It’s difficult to read texts on complex topics written by authors who are not afraid to bore their audience” (p. 101). Three pages into this chapter, I quickly realized D. T. Willingham is no scaredy cat. I read the words on the page, amazed Willingham could stretch a relatively simple idea like “give yourself enough time to do your reading” into four pages of text. This is not a controversial stance that requires an elaborate argument. Yet Willingham dissects this concept (if you would call the statement Allocate Significant Time to Reading a concept. Isn’t that just a logical thing we all implicitly agree on?) until you feel your eyes begin to bleed.

However, I cannot only complain about this book. I realize that as we head off to university in a couple of years, Willingham’s revelations (okay, that was a little sarcastic) might benefit us. The most significant tip for me was, before you start reading, think about what you are going to learn. To get a hint of this, flip through the pages to get a sense of what the chapter is about. Make an outline with possible headings for your reading notes. Other learning points included; try to stay awake as you read dry material, place post-it’s on pages ahead of your reading to serve as little reminders that your mind alive, do not just highlight information that seems important, but keep notes as you read, and do not rely on end of chapter summaries and boldface text to give you the essential information. (This essential information can all be found in the boldface text and “in a sentence” summaries at the end of each reading strategy tip). 

I look forward to attaining enlightenment reading Chapter 6, How to Study for Exams. I wonder if Willingham will suggest revolutionary techniques such as; gain a deep understanding of concepts, rather than just surface memorization; create complete study notes; and overall, Allocate Significant Time to Studying to avoid last-minute cramming. Ground breaking!

Solid term, not too shabby, couldve been better, but it wasnt, huge bummer, anyways I live with it, lets hope for a B+ this term, wouldnt be bad. Honestly I find my essays so good, but everyone has their own opinions, for my second language, I do good, cant complain.