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jscarbo · 01-02-2015, 09:55 AM

In addition to the awkwardness of marking up ebooks, the other big problem for me in critical and analytical reading and serious study is that it's much more difficult to navigate back and forth to review and re-read important material.

I'm a retired attorney and attended law school back in the 1970's. I did very well as a law student and graduated cum laude near the top of my class. During my last year of law school was asked to teach seminars to first year students about how to study such massive amounts of material, often thousands of pages of text and casebooks each semester. I developed a system partially based on Adler's system which I taught law students and over the following years to many other university students and those preparing to enter universities.

My system involves reading through all the material three times. First, a very quick read to get an overall sense of where the material is going and what the major points are. Secondly, a very careful, analytical reading without marking up anything. Lastly, a third reading, marking up and highlighting the important points you need to remember, but only the bare minimum necessary to jog your memory or highlight absolutely essential material. If done properly, when preparing for an exam, all that is usually necessary is to review your highlights and mark-ups, which means that you can actually review and recall several thousand pages of course material within a reasonable period of exam preparation time.

It's a great system and works for most fields of study but would be almost impossible to do with ebooks. I still get an occasional opportunity to mentor aspiring higher education students or give advice about how to succeed in law school or college and I always point out these difficulties with ebooks. They're great for some things but are much more difficult to use for serious study and mastery of the material presented. I generally recommend that students only use ebooks for supplementary material and use print books for primary texts and important material.

01-02-2015, 09:55 AM	#26
jscarbo Addict Posts: 220 Karma: 1075434 Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Costa Rica Device: Kindle Voyage, Kindle PW2, Nook HD+, Nexus 7	In addition to the awkwardness of marking up ebooks, the other big problem for me in critical and analytical reading and serious study is that it's much more difficult to navigate back and forth to review and re-read important material. I'm a retired attorney and attended law school back in the 1970's. I did very well as a law student and graduated cum laude near the top of my class. During my last year of law school was asked to teach seminars to first year students about how to study such massive amounts of material, often thousands of pages of text and casebooks each semester. I developed a system partially based on Adler's system which I taught law students and over the following years to many other university students and those preparing to enter universities. My system involves reading through all the material three times. First, a very quick read to get an overall sense of where the material is going and what the major points are. Secondly, a very careful, analytical reading without marking up anything. Lastly, a third reading, marking up and highlighting the important points you need to remember, but only the bare minimum necessary to jog your memory or highlight absolutely essential material. If done properly, when preparing for an exam, all that is usually necessary is to review your highlights and mark-ups, which means that you can actually review and recall several thousand pages of course material within a reasonable period of exam preparation time. It's a great system and works for most fields of study but would be almost impossible to do with ebooks. I still get an occasional opportunity to mentor aspiring higher education students or give advice about how to succeed in law school or college and I always point out these difficulties with ebooks. They're great for some things but are much more difficult to use for serious study and mastery of the material presented. I generally recommend that students only use ebooks for supplementary material and use print books for primary texts and important material. Last edited by jscarbo; 01-02-2015 at 10:03 AM.