I did not have good studie techniques

Once I started using text-to-speech I was able to read at the same pace as everyone else. I thought: “Great, now I can learn so much!”. I already had been to University got a degree in computer science, but being a dyslectic that was tough. Now things would be different.

Soon I discovered that even though I was reading (listen actually, but it’s really the same, I will say read from here on) I had difficulties of remembering and understanding some things I read.

Remembering, as it turned out, is very important when it comes to understanding complex things.

I felt stupid. At times I thought that there was something wrong with me, that I was missing the skills to learn like others learn. Now that I was reading like everyone else, I should be able to read and understand the same books as everyone else. But I was new to reading fast and I needed to learn how to memorize, organize and understand all information.

What did I do

For better memory, retention and understanding of texts there are many different techniques. I will mention some here as a way of getting started. You are encouraged to explore more techniques to find what is best for you. Although this is a starting point.

  1. Get an overview of the content to learn in the course. What are the learning goals?
  2. Get an overview of the literature.
    1. books, read the back of the book, table of content, Introductions to chapters. This way you will have a skeleton for attaching all the knowledge you will be gathering.
    2. Articles, start with the summery and abstract. This will awaken questions in your head that will demand it’s answer when you read the rest of the article. Hopefully!
    3. Skim-read to get an overview of the text. Try to increase the speed of TorTalk as much as possible and still maintain an understanding.
  3. Do small presentation to each other. Choose differents parts to present to each other. This way your reading becomes more active when you know you will have to explain it to others. It forces you to a deeper understanding.
  4. Discuss what you read. This also will expose knowledge gaps and misconceptions.
  5. Could the subject be explained in a more understandable way? Wikipedia, popular science articles or “For dummies series” could be a good introductions.
  6. Youtube or other videos can sometimes be very useful. If the video contains text, TorTalk vill be able to read it with the OCR-window.
  7.  Mind Maps. Organize what you learn in a mind map. This can be done on a piece of paper or digital. There are a lot of mind map software.I use XMind and there is a free version for both Mac and Windows.

Download the XMind here https://www.xmind.net/

A mind map of this content can be dowloaded here: