英语访谈对话 173 Reading Strategy

Todd: So, Alexandra, you're going to be a lawyer.

Alexandra: Yes, I am.

Todd: Very impressive and you're in law school and you were saying that in law school the reading load is very difficult.

Alexandra: Yes, for each class you have to read a few thousand pages over the course of three months, a semester, and it can be very difficult because you have five classes or more depending on your schedule so you end up reading from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep and try not to fall sleep in your book, so that can be difficult, so I try to read for awhile, maybe 50 minutes and take a ten minute break, stand up, walk around the room, and then get back to it or else it's too much information. It won't go in my head.

Todd: Yeah, how do you retain everything?

Alexandra: You just go back. You take notes for every 50 minute block. You stand up at the 10 minute block and stretch, come back and try write down what you read and try to, you know, do small little bullet points of what you read and that sort of keeps it in your mind.

Todd: That's a good strategy. Wow. Do you do anything to actually increase your reading speed?

Alexandra: No, you can't. With law you have to read each word, because each word has a particular definition. It could be a procedure in a courtroom which has particular steps, so if you omit words, or skip things you might miss the whole point of the case, so you can't speed read as it were. That's why you need to do it, you read for a long time. You just have to be careful and try to take enough breaks to give yourself a rest.