Skills for Success / Academic Skills / The Basic Steps in Doing an Assignment
The fourth step in doing an assignment is to read the relevant literature. There is a lot to read at university, so it is important to be quick, but it is also important to understand and not miss something important. So, what techniques are there to help students process a lot of literature effectively? Let's look at the key skills.
This is when you want to get a general idea of the text without reading every word. You can quickly flick through and look at the title, contents list, headings, pictures, the summary. Skimming is especially useful when you are still deciding which texts to use.
This is when you are only looking for a specific piece of information (e.g. a date, a name) in a text without reading every word. If you know what you are looking for, don't waste time reading the whole text, but just scan the pages looking for a key word.
When you have found a text that you want to look at more deeply, you can spend a bit more time and get engaged with the text. This means that you are interacting with the text in some way, for example highlighting sections, taking notes, asking questions that you want it to answer, thinking how it connects to other texts you have read.
It is important to get engaged with a text in this way because it deepens your understanding, helps you learn, and builds your critical skills, all of which are essential for getting good grades in an assignment.
Here are four ways of getting engaged with a text.
This is can be when you highlight or underline, or when you write comments on the text.
You can get started with critical reading quite simply. Here are some examples of things you can try:
If you want to know more about critical reading, see our Mini-Module: Quick Guide to Reading Critically
To enhance your understanding, take time to think about what you have read and how it connects with your studies, other research, and your own personal experience.
Real notetaking helps you to remember and understand. Writing summaries or paraphrases of what you have read is one useful technique. Sometimes it might be enough just to note key words that will trigger your memory. There are various notetaking techniques, for example the Cornell method and mind maps,
Notetaking is not the same as copying and pasting chunks of text - the difference is that when you make your own summaries or choose your own key words, you are being active and creative which helps you understand and remember.
If you want to know more about Notetaking, see our Notetaking Resources Page
