Personally while reading text now discovering new strategies I enjoy annotating the text, as well as summarizing what I have read and making connections between what was discussed in the text and other subject matters. I feel as though these strategies better improve my comprehension of what I had read. I then enjoy mind mapping or using the trigger method in order to develop ideas for an essay. I tend to write down ideas for topics to discuss throughout an essay and then to write a few words that will help me discover new ideas rather than planning out my essay entirely. I feel as though this helps me discover new topics without having too many ideas on one page which can sometimes be flustering. When it comes to drafting I enjoy writing an outline. I feel as though this helps organize the ideas I had generated in my brainstorming and help differentiate between which information is useful and what information will ultimately become unnecessary and will thus distract the reader from my argument. For revision I enjoy creating checklists to determine if I have met all the requirements for the essay. I also tend to tackle the challenges which I feel will prove to be the most tedious first, this is due to the fact that during revision many a times my ideas will change and I would like to have all my ideas flow nicely rather than be choppy and not flow. To polish my essay to thus determine if my essay does indeed flow and my argument is prominent I enjoy rereading my essay out loud as well as having a peer read my essay who has no knowledge of the essay requirements.
In other classes specifically, psychology and lab these methods prove useful. While completing homework for psychology, which tends to be reading articles or watching TED talks, annotating the article or the transcript is very useful to better understand the main argument of the speaker. This strategy also has proved useful for lab while writing lab reports. This technique allows me to determine what information is potentially useful for my report. Another technique useful for lab has been organizing an outline which has helped organize the many discussion points necessary to meet.
