Reading

[Young Sexton]

I decided to post this here since this is where all the clever people post.

For a while now i have been reading nutrition and training books, and because i cant get a job was thinking about going to college or to do some type of nutrition course. Problem is the last few months when i have been trying to read books, i get past the first chapter and try and think back to what i have read. blank. I am taking nothing in at all, just reading the words and not remembering a thing.

I have tried writing parts down, sitting i na quite room, listening to music etc but nothing seems to be working. Has anyone got any tips or gone through the same problem as this?

Thanks.

[ReD_mIst]

Have you considered a job in McDonalds?

[black gerbil1]

follow the approaches yourself,practice them , you will learn and you will know if in fact they work.

I'm not a big fan of books myself, There are many ways to gain weight/lose weight. Ive tried alot of ways and I know now which ones work well for me and yield good results, while others not so good.

[Young Sexton]

Do you know how fat i would get if i worked at Mcdonalds!

and thats alright if our talking about things like diet and training etc. but i pretty much have them sorted. Its more things you cant put into practise, like how muscle fibres work for example.

[ReD_mIst]

Read the books out aloud and record it, then you can play it back when resting, driving, sleeping.....

[tdys]

Some good ideas for active reading techniques here:

http://www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.html

The next article (navigate at the bottom the page) goes over techniques to review what you have read and make it stick.

It depends what sort of learner you are...

I like mindmaps which use key words and pictures to take notes. The important thing is to be active - know why you are reading, what you are looking for and make notes which work for you.

Hope this helps.

[tdys]

A useful tool for reading for retention is SQ3R:

The acronym SQ3R stands for the five sequential techniques you should use to read a book:

Survey:
Survey the document: scan the contents, introduction, chapter introductions and chapter summaries to pick up a shallow overview of the text. Form an opinion of whether it will be of any help. If it does not give you the information you want, discard it.

Question:
Make a note of any questions on the subject that come to mind, or particularly interest you following your survey. Perhaps scan the document again to see if any stand out. These questions can be considered almost as study goals - understanding the answers can help you to structure the information in your own mind.

Read:
Now read the document. Read through useful sections in detail, taking care to understand all the points that are relevant. In the case of some texts this reading may be very slow. This will particularly be the case if there is a lot of dense and complicated information. While you are reading, it can help to take notes in Concept Map format.

Recall:
Once you have read appropriate sections of the document, run through it in your mind several times. Isolate the core facts or the essential processes behind the subject, and then see how other information fits around them.

Review:
Once you have run through the exercise of recalling the information, you can move on to the stage of reviewing it. This review can be by rereading the document, by expanding your notes, or by discussing the material with colleagues. A particularly effective method of reviewing information is to have to teach it to someone else!

Key Points:
SQ3R is a useful technique for extracting the maximum amount of benefit from your reading time. It helps you to organize the structure of a subject in your mind. It also helps you to set study goals and to separate important information from irrelevant data.

SQ3R is a five-stage active reading technique. The stages are:

Survey

Question

Read

Recall

Review

If you use SQ3R, you will significantly improve the quality of your study time

[Wiegieboard]

Some people learn better from listening than from reading. Can you get the books you read in spoken voice tapes?

[Young Sexton]

Thanks tdys, im on bad a bad internet connection at the minute but will check that out when i get home.
I had thought of audio tapes, but you cant get alot of things in audio tapes. If all else fails i will give recording myself reading the books ago, although it will be abit of a hastle + i have a boring voice :(

[DetoxGuru.com]

their is a huge difference between what is useful in the real world and what you find in textbooks, if you want to expand your knowledge then spend alot of time researching on the internet there is 1000 times more info on the internet than you will find in text books, but if you are looking to get a degree / qualification / job based around nutrition then get buried in those oh so interesting text books.

[SWM]

I spend most of my life reading since I am a student. For me if I seriously want to remember what i'm reading then I have to take notes. It's not so much about having notes to read later but the process of taking them that helps the memory. Also, depending on the books, read with a dictionary - no one knows every word in a sophisticated book and guessing isn't satisfactory.

Recording then listening doesn't work for me.

As for courses why not something like sports science - maybe the variety would make the reading easier.


Simon

[cannon]

I'm 29 and have only been reading for the last year. I probably only read 2-3 books in my whole life before last year.
The reason I didn't read was because like you I found it hard to take in what ever it was I was studying/reading.

The thing which made me get into books in a big way this last year was a good fiction book (A Sparrow Falls - Wilbur Smith). I was in a cottage in Brittany bored out of my mind, so picked up the book as a last resort to keep me from going stir crazy!

As it turned out I couldn't put it down, sure there were some bits I just couldn't take in, but the book was so good it didn't matter.

Since then I've read over 30 books (both fiction and non fiction,) and I'm reading faster and taking more in with every book I read.

I suppose it's like anything - the more you practice the better you get.

Hope this helps

Jon

[Rosi]

There's a lot of good nutrition and sports physiology information available in podcast format. You can download whole lecture courses for free! Try searching on iTunes. Doc C's anatomy and physiology course is brilliant. http://faculty.css.edu/gcizadlo/AnatPhys/index.html

As for reading - if you find that reading a whole chapter is too much to take in then try sticking to smaller bite sized chunks. I'll often just read a couple of pages at a time and keep going back to it. Don't expect to be able to get through technical material at the same speed that you'd read Men's Health.

[jayman2606]

I decided to post this here since this is where all the clever people post.

For a while now i have been reading nutrition and training books, and because i cant get a job was thinking about going to college or to do some type of nutrition course. Problem is the last few months when i have been trying to read books, i get past the first chapter and try and think back to what i have read. blank. I am taking nothing in at all, just reading the words and not remembering a thing.

I have tried writing parts down, sitting i na quite room, listening to music etc but nothing seems to be working. Has anyone got any tips or gone through the same problem as this?

Thanks.

I have been writing condensed notes of anything interesting I read now for years. The idea is I have all the key points and interesting parts of a book in say 5-15 or so hand written pages. Then sometime later on I can sit down for 20 minutes and read the essential parts of the book all over again. I recommend it to anyone!

[Young Sexton]

Thanks to everyone who replied, my internets been terrible the last week but seems ok now so il check them all out.

[londonpride]

to be honest i can be the same. i graduated senior school with good grades and always did well as school (not a nerd, just wasn't thick :) ).
however when i looked back my final few years at school i can't barely remember a thing.
same goes for uni. i did a marketing degree and don't remember any of it. fortunately my degree got me a job in that sector and once i began work in it it all rang a bell and came back to me, plus first hand experience obviously aids knowledge and helps you remember it.

one of the reasons i'd never make a lawyer though. i did that for over a year and enjoyed it and passed all the units i did, however when i'd think back to those units a few months later i wouldn't remember hardly any of it.i'd be a nightmare in the court room had i carried on with it, lol.