What are some useful techniques to filter out useless information in an article, book or textbook? This would allow an understanding of the main ideas in the text. For an article, this means finding a thesis. For a book, this means finding main ideas of each chapter. For a textbook, this means findi

This really depends on why you have trouble in getting knowledge out of text. As a philosopher, I'd like to point out that that is what you are looking for, knowledge. Knowledge is kind of like information and facts that you in your mind link to things you understand from before you encountered the new information / fact. So you need to think about how you process knowledge. How you manage to understand new things. What works for you? Is music something that helps you? Is drawing out pictures the way you learn best? Should you just be speaking out the lines to yourself? You need to figure out what type of learner you are, to get best results. You do that just by trying out different methods. Here's a few pointers that you might appreciate: The most important things in textual form are usually expressed in the beginning and end of a paragraph. And the same goes for chapters, too. So how good texts are written so that they first explain what it is they are talking about, then embellish, then go on to summarise or give the point of the text. Also, in texts, you need to learn to pick up key words and terminology. That isn't meaningless, terminology is the hook on which you hang knowledge, it's the key you need to use find the knowledge. Find those key words in the text and learn what they mean, think about them until you understand them. You can start by first locating the most important ten words in a certain area, and understanding them, after which you have in place the basic concepts for thinking about that area. Luckily text books usually put key words and phrases in bold or emphasise them in other ways. You can also buy your own books, or take photocopies of the text and use magic markers to highlight what you find most important in the text. After you've found the most important messages in the text, you might already be ready to move forward, or if you are not good with learning straight from text, you might need to deepen your understanding by making a song out of the key points and singing it to yourself, or reading out loud the key points, or drawing a picture to illustrate the points and their relations. The thing that I am trying to say is that learning requires understanding. There is no short cut to understanding. For figuring out the main points of a text you can try the short cut of carefully reading the first and last lines of each paragraph and skimming the rest. But even for that you should realise that deeper understanding of the subject requires understanding also the middle part. And you can help yourself in subjects like history by starting off by remembering centuries first, or milleniums, for that matter. And orders of events. It's more important to understand the order of events, what era's follow each other, what events are linked together, than remember the exact years. And do remember that high school studies are usually built so that the later courses build on the earlier ones. So it might not be enough to understand the basics, you might need some of the less important facts, too. You can educate yourself also by finding literature or movies that relate to what ever you are studying. Everything that you study in school relates somehow to humanity, to real life. There is always a way to bring the information to your life and make it knowledge. Some things are just harder to learn for some people than others. I hope this helped!

Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph, and skim everything in between.

Your memory will not last you forever. Even what you think you've mastered now, you will forget with disuse. Use a unified notetaking software for everything you study. Notes on paper cannot be flexibly reorganized, but this is trivial with software. Be sure to backup your files. Review the notes as often as necessary as you go along. I do not recommend writing them first on paper and then making them digital - learn to do it directly in software. In your notes, connect the concepts you learn with each other but also with concepts you already know. For any topic, the concepts should be connected. Remember that the brain can only create and retrieve memories via conceptual connections. It is not so good at storing unconnected memories. Unfortunately, I think could be insufficient to keep you from failing academically. You'll have to motivate yourself to stay focused without distractions, which is easier said than done.

The key might hinge on what you mean by useful. All that material was placed there for a reason, certainly useful to someone, but perhaps not so relevant to your objectives. So the first thing to do, is to honestly ponder what you are trying to achieve and then what is useful becomes more apparent to you. Is your objective to master the subject, develop a opinion based on cursory knowledge or to pass a test in school? For the first case, useless material would be stuff like the preface that barely relates to the subject, the second would be to extract the key arguments, while the third case, what you are really looking for is the answers to the exam. For the first case, read through all the material you can find and then some more. For the second, read the other answers to this question. Learn how to spot the key arguments in an article, or just get Cliff's Notes. For the third, that's got less to do with knowing the subject and more to do with knowing the questions. Not suggesting you cheat in exams. Instead, go work through past exam papers, spotting trends and patterns, listen out for hints the teacher drops in class and start cramping at least 3 months before the exam.Cynical as this might sounds, exams are less about testing your mastery of the subject as it is about testing your ability to answer the questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA I believe this will help. Thanks for A2A.

For myself, I usually write down things that seems important while reading something. Say am reading so and so chapter of Histroy book. Simultaneously while reading, I keep a pen and a notebook handy where I write down things(facts, ideas, themes) that seem important. This is also a good way to review the chapter later since you have the important bits written in your notebook.  For the sciences, try writing down the equations and stuff from your own understanding and not memory. If its a chemical equation try balancing it yourself. I strongly suggest you try this. The very act of writing helps me commit a lot of stuff to memory. Good luck!

The problem... The solution... First – Pull yourself together and overcome your fear of books. They are there to give you information and make you more knowledgeable NOT to confuse you.   Second – Start with a fresh & positive mind, clutter & noise-free surroundings, zero distractions (cellphone switched off, no music blaring in the background, no kids/adults clamoring for your attention etc.)   Third – A recommended course book that should be sufficient for your learning needs. You need to be able to assimilate info properly from a single book before you graduate to using multiple sources for a single topic.   Fourth – Keep a notebook, multi-coloured pen (as suggested in a previous post), highlighter ready.   Much of what I have to say may be a repetition of the earlier answers, but, you need to understand that is the wise way to study.   Now, you are ready to begin.   1. Get familiar : Open the chapter, skim through the pages reading the topics (in bold) and, if any, text that has been highlighted. When you reach the end, read the summary to get a gist of all that you shall be reading. 2. Return to the start of the chapter. Write down the topic in your notebook – to start with your note-making. 3. Read the first topic slowly, more than once if necessary and identify the important lines explaining the topic. Definitions, derivations must be understood before you proceed any further. Highlight these lines in your textbook (only if it belongs to you – else make a mental highlight) using your highlighter. Now write what you have understood in the form of points (bullets) with a small explanation in your notebook taking the help of the book. Remember – these notes will be what you shall read before the exam & they are an abridged but complete summary of the chapter. Write definitions & other important data in a different colour for easy identification. 4. Your notes should be able to represent information pictorially – A simple example :  matter exists in three states – solid, liquid & gas Represent it like so MATTER                                                      |            ------------------------------------------------------------------------------             |                                       |                                |          SOLID                                 LIQUID                     GAS               Or, percentages as pie charts   5. Effective note making is all about Recognizing the main ideas Identifying info relevant to you Having a system that works for you Reducing the info to point and diagram format Where possible putting the info in your own words – except formulae & definitions Example...   6. Do’s & Don’ts of note-making Make your notes brief. Never use a sentence where you can use a phrase.  Never use a phrase where you can use a word. Use abbreviations and symbols, but be consistent. Put most notes in your own words.  However, the following should be noted exactly: 1. Formulas      2. Definitions      3. Specific facts Use outline form and/or a numbering system.  Indention helps you distinguish major from minor points. Have a uniform system of punctuation and abbreviation that will make sense to you. Use a skeleton outline and show importance by indenting.  Leave lots of white space for later additions. Don't keep notes on oddly shaped pieces of paper.  Keep notes in order and in one place. Review your notes regularly.  This is the only way to achieve lasting memory. 6. Use mnemonics to remember correctly. When I was in school (there were nine planets in those days) a useful mnemonic to learn them is sequence was My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets.      Mercury, Venus, Earth etc. You could make up your own - maybe an acronym that works or a sentence like the above to remember points. 7.  Having done this, when you revise... Go through old question papers/assignments for questions on the topic and write down the answers. Check your points using your notes (if you are confident they are good) or the text book, to see how much & how well you have understood. Keep writing all definitions without peeking in the textbook till you are perfect. The same for experiments, diagrams etc. This will help you score well, for, you will not lose precious marks in something you know well. For a start, rephrase your question in a manner that makes it readable & answerable by identifying the purpose crisply & clearly. You could message me directly for help with note-making to start you out on your mission of improving your study skills. Thanks for the A2A Anon - hope this helped.   With a hope that you become this soon... (Images have been googled...thanks to all those sources :-) )

My big worry from the way you describe the problem boils down to “I need to learn facts well enough to pass my tests.” That leads me to believe that your basic problem is that you don’t really find the material interesting. Generally the best way to learn something is to understand how it works in a way you find interesting. If you can’t do that than your stuck with taking notes and rote memorization.   I would also try different input methods like reading it out load. You might feel silly, but some people remember information better if they hear it. Another way would be to rewrite out the section a few times by hand.

Is this a trick question? You haven't filtered out the useless information in the question you've asked. Charity begins at home, try being to the point in what ever you say or do,  and about failing in subjects in school due to your "problem" in processing the given information, stop trying to do that, instead of finding ways to minimize your learning ability, try learning as much as you can, try enjoying learning. If you can't enjoy learning new things,you won't be able to process information, no matter however optimized it is.