Study Effectively: Literature

Studying Literature subjects in school/college can be a whole new beautiful experience, if you can take a little time to get the essence of it !

When you're reading a story/poem/essay form your textbook for the first time, don't read it to pass the exam. Rather read it for enjoyment. Imagine it, visualize it. This goes a long way.

When you read the next time, highlight important aspects and take small notes.

Don't leave to study on the night before exam, thinking it easy.

Read title, author's name, location, character names, genre carefully. Understand the plot.

Analyze the textual details.

- Why do certain events happen? What are the motives of the characters? Why has the author written in a particular style? What is the significance of the point of view? How does the cultural and historical context influence the writing?

Your professors will grade you not just on what you know, but also how you think.

- Are you able to discuss the complexity of a work and see below the surface? Can you draw connections between works? Can you formulate new ideas and do more than parrot back points made in class? Can you explain how tone qualifies the meaning of a work, how irony allows an author to say one thing but mean something else? Can you extract social and political agendas hidden in a piece of writing?

Study guides can help you understand complex plots or in reviewing. But a study guide never substitutes for reading the literature—they cant capture the tone, language, detail and richness of the original work.

Practice writing answers to questions of your own at home. This helps in building confidence in you, sparks your interest even more, helps you understand the literary works and of course, increase your creative writing skill- which is highly important.