Study Tips Series: Identifying and Extracting Information

Hey Everyone and welcome to my study tips series.
Last week we discussed Reading For A Purpose and today we will look at Identifying And Extracting The Information You Need.

Once you have gathered all of your notes the next step is to go through them and extract and identify all the main points that you need.

Start by skim reading all of the information you have collected and list your findings in note form. Once this is complete you can check your lists against the original document/question to ensure all the important and relevant information is there.

Next you should start collating the information and bringing it together so that pieces all concerning the same topics are together, then re-list the information under common headings.

Now you can start drafting your first edit document from the notes collected.

Important things to check as you do this are;

1. Accuracy – Always make a note of sources and reference where necessary
2. Relevance – Does it have a point?
3. Completeness – Has the aim been achieved? Have all points been covered?
4. Grammatical correctness – Many schools, colleges and universities will know important marks off a piece of work if the grammar and spalling are incorret.
5. Logical Order – Is the writing easy to follow?
6. Length – Is the piece too long? too short? does more need adding? Most pieces will have a required word length to check against.

As we progress through this series you will find the posts become more in depth but for now I’m just running over some basics.

Thank you for reading and if there is anything you’d like me to include in this series please leave a comment below.

The Stationery Geekette x