Active Reading

Little is made of the fact that the skills required to read a textbook are different from those used when reading a consumer magazine or a work of fiction. The reasons for this difference are the greater density of information and sequencing of concepts that occur in non-fiction publications. As a result, skimming is best avoided and every paragraph should be read at an appropriate pace to digest the facts that are being presented.

Allied to careful reading is summary note-taking. Specifically, and much to some people’s horror, it is often useful to write in the margins of the pages – and that is why textbooks commonly provide so much white space.

This note-taking is at the heart of a technique known as “active reading”, which makes a potentially surprising appearance in Professor Mark Moldwin’s excellent book Introduction to Space Weather. As well as his core subject, Moldwin has included supporting supplementary information at the end of every chapter and in several cases these sections contain advice about effective learning techniques.

Active reading involves writing a brief note to summarise the key point at the end of each paragraph. Writing this information by hand is likely to be much more effective than simply highlighting a key phrase with a highlighter pen (or tool, in an e-book). This is especially true when the note is in your own words rather than simply being copied from the text.

Sometimes the note may be an equation or a diagram that converts textual information into another form. Or it may be a pertinent question that is answered in the text.

I must be honest and admit that I prefer to write such notes on separate pieces of paper to avoid marking the original text. This is not the most convenient approach but I prefer it out of respect for both the book’s author, whose words I rate more highly than my own, and the book itself, which may be read by others after me and should be left to convey its message afresh to new readers.

In the past I have sometimes turned my loose-sheet notes into content summaries and, prompted by Mark Moldwin’s book, I have decided to start doing that again as it’s a great way to combine various nuggets of information. The idea is not to rewrite the book (that would be pointless) but rather to provide some of the key points in a condensed narrative that uses my own words. I might even post some of them here on physbang.