To further network the information into your long-term memory:

1. Use your highlighted predatory route and notes to construct an informal outline. Pay attention to the difference between main points and supporting points.
2. Use your informal outline to compose an accurate summary of the writer’s points.

Now you have a valuable document for quickly refreshing your memory later, much easier than trying to find your way back into an unmarked text.

Hjortshoj makes a bold claim: “It you become adept [through practice] at scanning in this way, you can ‘read’ an entire book in twenty or thirty minutes.  If you take notes in the process, you will end up with a more useful understanding of its content than you would have if you had spent several hours reading it from cover to cover in a passive, linear fashion” (52).

Consider the progress you can make scanning one chapter from a textbook or an article in a scholarly journal and making the annotations we suggest above.