Reading Skills - II

Introduction
Making notes is an essential part of the reading process. It
helps you internalise difficult ideas by putting them into your
own words and can help you be more focused during the
exam revision. You are more likely to remember material you
have thought about and made notes on than material you
have read passively.

There is no right or wrong way, just find a method that suits

you (for example, bullet points, mind maps and diagrams,
highlighting, annotating or underlining significant words).
 Note-making depends on
what is expected of you (e.g. learning outcomes listed in your reading
texts)
what each assignment requires you to do
how you learn best (so you can choose the most effective technique)
If you are given a handout before or during a face-to-face
session, use this as the framework for taking notes.
Revisiting your notes helps you learn the material and prepare
for assignments. It helps you 'pull together' all the different
ideas you have recorded, so you can make cross-links with
earlier study.
Steps in note-making

Many people find it effective to take notes in two steps.

First step: Identifying and writing down the main points

Second step: Summarising, condensing and organising the

notes so that they can be used when writing assignments or
revising for exams.

In general, your notes should be brief and to the point.

Step 1: Identifying and writing down the main
points
Main points help you understand the content, the writers
perspective, attitude and the purpose.
Read and understand the text carefully.
Look for signposts while reading.
Ask yourself questions about the rationale behind the title,
paragraphing and discourse structure.
Think about the purpose of the text.
 Find the main ideas - what is important
They may be found in topic sentences.
Distinguish between main and subsidiary information.
Delete most details and examples, unimportant information, anecdotes,
examples, illustrations, data etc.
Find alternative words/synonyms for these words/phrases but do not
change specialised vocabulary and common words.

Understand the structure of the text

Identify the meaning relationships between the words/ideas - e.g.
cause/effect, generalisation, contrast. Express these relationships in a
different way.
Change the grammar of the text: rearrange words and sentences, change
nouns to verbs, adjectives to adverbs, etc., break up long sentences,
combine short sentences.
 Distinguish between main and subsidiary information. Delete
most details and examples, unimportant information,
anecdotes, examples, illustrations, data etc. Simplify the text.
Reduce complex sentences to simple sentences, simple
sentences to phrases, phrases to single words.
Examples:
People whose professional activity lies in the field of politics
are not, on the whole, conspicuous for their respect for factual
accuracy.
Politicians often lie.
Failure to assimilate an adequate quantity of solid food over
an extended period of time is absolutely certain to lead, in
due course, to a fatal conclusion.
If you do not eat, you die.
 It is undeniable that the large majority of non-native
learners of English experience a number of problems
in attempting to master the phonetic patterns of the
language.
Many learners find English pronunciation difficult.
It is not uncommon to encounter sentences which,
though they contain a great number of words and are
constructed in a highly complex way, none the less
turn out on inspection to convey very little meaning of
any kind.
Some long and complicated sentences mean very
little.
 One of the most noticeable phenomena in any
big city, such as London or Paris, is the steadily
increasing number of petrol-driven vehicles,
some in private ownership, others belonging
to the public transport system, which congest
the roads and render rapid movement more
difficult year by year.
Big cities have growing traffic problems.
 Understand tone/ attitude
Sure, Nitesh Tiwaris Bollywood crowd-pleaser
Dangal follows a formula: Father abandons his
dream of being an international wrestling champion.
Father hopes for a son who will live out his dream for
him. Father ends up with four daughters.
Father discovers that two of his daughters are
dexterous brawlers. Father declares, From now on,
they will only wrestle. Father trains those daughters,
in defiance of the villagers tut-tutting and
assumptions about womens roles, to mud wrestle,
and instills in them a spirit of feminism.
(The New York Times)
 When Mahavir Singh Phogat (Aamir), a wrestler from
Haryana, loses hope of having a son, he trains his
daughters Geeta (Fatima) and Babita (Sanya) to make
wrestling history, thus breaking the taboo of Indian
women participating in a sport thus far dominated by
men.
this screen adaptation serves as a recap of their
arduous journey and it vigorously recaptures their
stubborn father's resolve to make them professional
wrestlers against the odds. Since it encapsulates the
historic wins of the Phogats, who brought India glory,
the film is also bound to inspire more women to
seriously consider kushti as a sport.
(Times of India)
 Lets look at a text
WHY WOMEN LIVE LONGER
Despite the overall increase in life expectancy in Britain over the
past century, women still live significantly longer than men. In fact,
in 1900 men could expect to live to 49 and women to 52, a
difference of three years, while now the figures are 74 and 79,
which shows that the gap has increased to five years. Various
reasons have been suggested for this situation, such as the
possibility that men may die earlier because they take more risks.
But a team of British scientists have recently found a likely answer
in the immune system, which protects the body from diseases. The
thymus is the organ which produces the T cells which actually
combat illnesses. Although both sexes suffer from deterioration of
the thymus as they age, women appear to have more T cells in their
bodies than men of the same age. It is this, the scientists believe,
that gives women better protection from potentially fatal diseases
such as influenza and pneumonia.
 British women live longer than men: 79/74
Reasons? new research suggests immune system > thymus > T
cells
Women have more T cells than men = better protection
Read the text and suggest a suitable
title.
Dean Kamen is a 50-year-old American eccentric who is
also a multi-millionaire. He always wears blue denim
shirts and jeans, even when visiting his friend, the
president, in the White House. He flies to work by
helicopter, which he also uses for visiting his private
island off the coast of Connecticut. As an undergraduate,
Kamen developed the first pump that would give regular
doses of medicine to patients. The patent for this and
other original medical inventions has produced a huge
income, allowing him to run his own research company
which, among many other projects, has produced the
iBot, the worlds first wheelchair which can climb stairs.
Step 2: Organizing main points

Once we list main points, the next task is to

organize them.
Rewrite the main ideas in complete sentences.
Combine your notes into a piece of continuous
writing. Use conjunctions and adverbs such as
'therefore', 'however', 'although', 'since', to show
the connections between the ideas.
Check your work.
There are different formats to organize notes.
 Outlining method
The information which is most general begins at the left with each
more specific group of facts indented with spaces to the right. The
relationships between the different parts is carried out through
indenting.
Place major points farthest to the left. Indent each more specific point
to the right. Levels of importance will be indicated by distance away
from the major point. Indention can be as simple as or as complex as
labeling the indentations with Roman numerals or decimals.
Well-organized system if done right. Outlining records content as well
as relationships. It also reduces editing and is easy to review by
turning main points into questions.
However, it requires more thought in class for accurate organization.
This system may not show relationships by sequence when needed.
 Extrasensory perception
definition: means of perceiving without use of sense
organs

three kinds
telepathy: sending messages
clairvoyance: forecasting the future
psychokinesis: perceiving events external to situation

current status
no current research to support or refute
few psychologists say impossible
door open to future
 Charting method
If the lecture or the text is chronological in structure, you may set up your
paper by drawing columns and labeling appropriate headings in a table.
Determine the categories to be covered in the lecture/ text. Set up your
paper in advance by columns headed by these categories. As you listen to
the lecture/ read the text, record information (words, phrases, main ideas,
etc.) into the appropriate category.
This method helps you track conversation and dialogues where you would
normally be confused and lose out on relevant content. Reduces amount
of writing necessary. Provides easy review mechanism for both
memorization of facts and study of comparisons and relationships.
Test will focus on both facts and relationships. Content is heavy and
presented fast. You want to reduce the amount of time you spend editing
and reviewing at test time. You want to get an overview of the whole
course on one big paper sequence.
Example:
 Sentence method
Write every new thought, fact or topic on a separate line,
numbering as you progress.
Slightly more organized than the paragraph. Gets more or all of the
information. Thinking to tract content is still limited.
However, can't determine major/minor points from the numbered
sequence. Difficult to edit without having to rewrite by clustering
points which are related. Difficult to review unless editing cleans up
relationship.
Use when the lecture is somewhat organized, but heavy with
content which comes fast. You can hear the different points, but
you don't know how they fit together. The instructor tends to
present in point fashion, but not in grouping such as "three related
points.
Example:
At first, Freud tried conventional, physical methods of
treatment such as giving baths, massages, rest cures, and
similar aids. But when these failed, he tried techniques of
hypnosis that he had seen used by Jean-Martin Charcot.
Finally, he borrowed an idea from Jean Breuer and used
direct verbal communication to get an unhypnotized
patient to reveal unconscious thoughts.
Sample Notes: Freud 1st -- used phys. trtment; e.g., baths,
etc. This fld. 2nd -- used hypnosis (fr. Charcot) Finally -- used
dirct vrb. commun. (fr. Breuer) - got unhynop, patnt to
reveal uncons. thoughts.
 Mapping method
Mapping is a method that uses comprehension/concentration
skills and evolves in a note taking form which relates each fact
or idea to every other fact or idea. Mapping is a graphic
representation of the content of a lecture.

This format helps you to visually track your lecture/ text

regardless of conditions. Little thinking is needed and
relationships can easily be seen. It is also easy to edit your
notes by adding numbers, marks, and color coding. Review
will call for you to restructure thought processes which will
force you to check understanding. Main points can be written
on flash or note cards and pieced together into a table or
larger structure at a later date.
 A mind map is a diagram used to
visually outline the information.

It can be used to generate,

structure and classify ideas.

It is usually created around a

single idea, placed in the centre.
 Categories and sub-categories radiate
as branches or sub-branches.
These can be further divided or sub-
divided as more and more
information is added.
Different colours/ shapes/ sizes can
be used to show different groups.
 No need for pages and pages of
information.
Allows you to quickly identify and
understand the structure of an idea.
Helps to understand how pieces of
information fit together.
Easy to recall and quick to review.
Helps to make easy associations
between different aspects and thus
generate new ideas.
Shows the relative importance of
different facts.
 Note making and summarizing -
example
Lets look at an example.
On a cloudy September day in the humid central Chinese city of Jingzhou, a
group of Chinese officials quietly inaugurated a new canal designed to address a
growing water shortage in an area normally plagued by flooding. The Bringing
the Yangtze to help the Han River canal project is needed because of a much
larger project, 250km to the north, that cuts the flow of the Han, a Yangtze
tributary. About a quarter of the water in the Han will be reallocated to arid
northern China in a $60bn engineering effort that critics say will create shortages
in the south.
Water from the middle leg of the south-north diversion project officially begins
flowing this month, a moment that will probably be marked with much greater
ceremony. The project, inspired by an offhand remark by Mao Zedong that the
north should borrow water from the south, is designed to alleviate chronic
water shortages in the industrial north and bring additional supply to growing
cities such as Beijing and Tianjin. Beijing argues that its titanic effort to
redistribute water is necessary for the north. But the impact is just beginning to
be felt in the south. This project from the beginning has been as controversial
as the Three Gorges, says Dai Qing, a Chinese journalist and environmentalist
who led the charge against the 1990s project, which has been plagued by
environmental problems since its completion in 2006.
On a cloudy September day in the humid central Chinese city of Jingzhou, a
group of Chinese officials quietly inaugurated a new canal designed to address a
growing water shortage in an area normally plagued by flooding. The Bringing
the Yangtze to help the Han River canal project is needed because of a much
larger project, 250km to the north, that cuts the flow of the Han, a Yangtze
tributary. About a quarter of the water in the Han will be reallocated to arid
northern China in a $60bn engineering effort that critics say will create shortages
in the south.
Water from the middle leg of the south-north diversion project officially begins
flowing this month, a moment that will probably be marked with much greater
ceremony. The project, inspired by an offhand remark by Mao Zedong that the
north should borrow water from the south, is designed to alleviate chronic
water shortages in the industrial north and bring additional supply to growing
cities such as Beijing and Tianjin. Beijing argues that its titanic effort to
redistribute water is necessary for the north. But the impact is just beginning to
be felt in the south. This project from the beginning has been as controversial
as the Three Gorges, says Dai Qing, a Chinese journalist and environmentalist
who led the charge against the 1990s project, which has been plagued by
environmental problems since its completion in 2006.
Worrisome signs of shortage are already cropping up in central China,
where cities along the mighty Yangtze were historically far more concerned
about floods. The Three Gorges dam has lowered silt deposits in the river
beneath it, causing some islands in the Yangtze delta to shrink, while barge
traffic has been left stranded when water levels run low. Shanghai, Chinas
financial centre, has had to fight incursions of seawater into its water
supply when the Yangtzes flow slows. That could become worse with the
regular diversion of 9.5bn cubic metres a year of water from the
Danjiangkou dam on the Han river, which will feed canals and pipes
running 1,400km north across two provinces to Beijing.

The Yangtzes water is being siphoned off even as the cities, industry and
agriculture along the river claim a greater share than in the past. A 2012
study by the Hubei Academy of Environmental Science found the diversion
project was likely to result in water levels too low for shipping along the
Han, make some irrigation networks unusable and annihilate fish species
that rely on seasonal flood cycles. Less water to dilute polluted waste and
run-off could pose a greater risk to human health and raise the cost to cities
and industry to treat the water.
Worrisome signs of shortage are already cropping up in central China,
where cities along the mighty Yangtze were historically far more concerned
about floods. The Three Gorges dam has lowered silt deposits in the river
beneath it, causing some islands in the Yangtze delta to shrink, while barge
traffic has been left stranded when water levels run low. Shanghai, Chinas
financial centre, has had to fight incursions of seawater into its water
supply when the Yangtzes flow slows. That could become worse with the
regular diversion of 9.5bn cubic metres a year of water from the
Danjiangkou dam on the Han river, which will feed canals and pipes
running 1,400km north across two provinces to Beijing.

The Yangtzes water is being siphoned off even as the cities, industry and
agriculture along the river claim a greater share than in the past. A 2012
study by the Hubei Academy of Environmental Science found the diversion
project was likely to result in water levels too low for shipping along the
Han, make some irrigation networks unusable and annihilate fish species
that rely on seasonal flood cycles. Less water to dilute polluted waste and
run-off could pose a greater risk to human health and raise the cost to cities
and industry to treat the water.
The diversion project has progressed in fits and starts, resulting in huge cost
overruns (the original budget was about $20bn) and creating a complex cast of
winners and losers. Among them are the 250,000 villagers forced to relocate to
make way for the expanded Danjiangkou reservoir. They wanted it to be done in
one fell swoop but society has changed, says Ms Dai. Now everyone wants to
know: whats in it for me?

The smaller Yangtze-to-Han canal shows how national authorities have had to
accommodate local concerns. By replenishing water diverted from the upper Han,
the 67km canal allows the lower Han to remain navigable and preserves the
industrial base around Wuhan, a city of 6.5m at the confluence of the Han and the
Yangtze. But that wont resolve the problem, says Du Yun, of the Institute of
Geodesy and Geophysics in Wuhan. The problem of not enough water in the south
will certainly crop up. An initial phase of the south-north projects middle route,
designed to increase water supply to Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, depleted
reservoirs needed for irrigation in the impoverished countryside around the capital.
This summer water from the Danjiangkou dam was used to offset a drought in
Henan province a diversion that will not be allowed once the middle leg is fully
complete and the northern cities claim their full allocation.
The diversion project has progressed in fits and starts, resulting in huge cost
overruns (the original budget was about $20bn) and creating a complex cast of
winners and losers. Among them are the 250,000 villagers forced to relocate to
make way for the expanded Danjiangkou reservoir. They wanted it to be done in
one fell swoop but society has changed, says Ms Dai. Now everyone wants to
know: whats in it for me?

The smaller Yangtze-to-Han canal shows how national authorities have had to
accommodate local concerns. By replenishing water diverted from the upper Han,
the 67km canal allows the lower Han to remain navigable and preserves the
industrial base around Wuhan, a city of 6.5m at the confluence of the Han and the
Yangtze. But that wont resolve the problem, says Du Yun, of the Institute of
Geodesy and Geophysics in Wuhan. The problem of not enough water in the south
will certainly crop up. An initial phase of the south-north projects middle route,
designed to increase water supply to Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, depleted
reservoirs needed for irrigation in the impoverished countryside around the capital.
This summer water from the Danjiangkou dam was used to offset a drought in
Henan province a diversion that will not be allowed once the middle leg is fully
complete and the northern cities claim their full allocation.
The eastern leg is less complex because it follows the existing route of the
historic Grand Canal. But planners found to their dismay that the water
pumped from the mouth of the Yangtze up the length of the historic Grand
Canal to the port city of Tianjin was too polluted to be used once it arrived,
requiring additional spending on water treatment plants. The tally of the
cost and benefits of the water diversion projects already under way will
determine whether Beijing presses ahead with the most expensive and
controversial western leg, which would tunnel through the hard rock of the
Tibetan plateau to bring water from mighty southern rivers into the upper
reaches of the Yellow river. Critics say China would be wiser to raise the
cost of water in places where it is in short supply, rather than engaging in
massive transfers to suit political constituencies in the north. Leo Horn-
Pathanothai, an environmental economist at the World Resources
Institute, says: Chinas answer to date has been engineering to increase
supply. Now the problem is national scarcity and the solutions are better
economics and governance.
(Lucy Hornby, Financial Times, Oct 14, 2014)
(859 words)
The eastern leg is less complex because it follows the existing route of the
historic Grand Canal. But planners found to their dismay that the water
pumped from the mouth of the Yangtze up the length of the historic Grand
Canal to the port city of Tianjin was too polluted to be used once it arrived,
requiring additional spending on water treatment plants. The tally of the
cost and benefits of the water diversion projects already under way will
determine whether Beijing presses ahead with the most expensive and
controversial western leg, which would tunnel through the hard rock of the
Tibetan plateau to bring water from mighty southern rivers into the upper
reaches of the Yellow river. Critics say China would be wiser to raise the
cost of water in places where it is in short supply, rather than engaging in
massive transfers to suit political constituencies in the north. Leo Horn-
Pathanothai, an environmental economist at the World Resources
Institute, says: Chinas answer to date has been engineering to increase
supply. Now the problem is national scarcity and the solutions are better
economics and governance.
Paragraph 1
Context: China, Project Connect Yangtze to Han (rivers), rivers in
the south project to take water to the arid north
Key words: quietly inaugurated, criticism about water shortage in the
south

Paragraph 2
Why this project: (i) chronic water shortage for industries in the
north; (ii) water supply to big cities like Beijing
Criticism: As controversial as Three Gorges dam

Paragraph 3
Problems with Three Gorges: (i) water shortage in Yangtze (but
earlier there were floods); (ii) islands shrinking; (iii) barge traffic
stranded; (iv) seawater entering drinking water supply
How is this connected with the present project: Such problems may
become worse
Paragraph 4
Social and economic problems: (i) huge cost; (ii) displacement of
people; (iii) demands of people

Paragraph 5
Link with the information in the first paragraph the canal
mentioned earlier was opened as a result of problems mentioned in
Para 4
Other issues: Cases from the past

Paragraph 6
Unexpected problems (eastern leg water became too polluted);
Controversial and expensive western leg in Tibetan plateau
Chinas answer earlier engineering
But it may not work better governance and economics
 Summary
Chinas answer to water shortage problems, so far, has been dams, canals
and other such expensive projects. However, such engineering solutions
have led to other serious problems. One such recent case is the ambitious
project connecting Yangtze and Han rivers to address water shortage to
industries in the north and to supply water to the ever-growing big cities.
Environmentalists and research organizations have pointed out that this
project will create problems similar to those created by Three Gorges dam.
Because of this project, the areas which have been traditionally affected by
floods are likely to face severe water shortage resulting in shrinking of river
islands, stranded barge traffic, seawater mixing with potable water, etc. This
project also has had several socio-economic implications: many people are
being displaced and their rehabilitation has not been easy. The project has
already incurred huge expenses. Therefore, some experts feel that China
should now concentrate on better governance and economics rather than
ambitious engineering solutions.
(160 words)