This will make future review easier, as you will have a rough summary to work from. Don’t get too bogged down in summary. You don’t have to summarize every little thing that happens in a chapter or act. Aim to note the main action of each one, as well as any important character or thematic moments. Include anything important that the character says or does, along with links to other characters in the text. For plays, you may want to note any speeches that seem particularly important, such as Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech or the “attention must be paid” speech from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. This can often be even more helpful than chapter summaries. What challenges and conflicts do the main characters face? What are their goals? For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has several problems he needs to solve: 1) Is the ghost of his father urging him to seek revenge trustworthy? 2) How can he take revenge on his uncle in a court full of people who are watching his every move? 3) How can he overcome his natural tendency to overthink things to work up the courage to take the revenge he wants? Sometimes, problems are solved fairly neatly at the end of a story: the Death Star is destroyed in Star Wars, the One Ring is destroyed and Aragorn restored as King in Lord of the Rings. Sometimes, problems are solved but not in ideal ways: for example, Hamlet does achieve his revenge and fulfill the ghost’s request, but he also kills several innocent people along the way and ends up dead himself. Understanding whether characters achieved their goals, or why they didn’t, will be useful in discussing the works in your exam. While you don’t necessarily need to memorize important statements or speeches, remembering what they’re generally about can be very helpful when you go to make an argument about a text. For example, if you’re studying Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, remembering that Mr. Darcy admits to meddling in Elizabeth’s family affairs will be useful in explaining why they are so angry with each other early in the book (i.e., he is too proud to admit that meddling really was wrong, and she is too prejudiced to admit he might have had motivations that made sense). Don’t skimp on detail here! Noting that “the tone of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is very sinister” won’t be much use in the exam if you don’t have a way to describe what’s making it feel sinister.  Write down particularly vivid moments from the text. Not only can these help you remember what happened in a chapter, they will give you evidence to use when you make claims about the text in your exam. For example, consider this quotation from Chapter 41 of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, when Ahab has finally caught up with the White Whale: “He [Ahab] piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.” This is far more evocative than simply saying “Ahab attacked the whale.” This passage emphasizes that Ahab is after the whale not just for taking his leg, but because he’s come to embody every single horrible thing that has happened to humans since time began in this whale, and he is willing to destroy himself -- it’s as if his chest is a cannon, remember, with a cannonball exploding from it -- to take the whale down. Symbolism is a favorite tool of authors. If some element, such as a color or specific item, shows up more than once or twice, it’s likely to be a symbol that represents something important. For example, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, the “A” that Hester Prynne must wear in punishment of her adultery is an obvious symbol, but her daughter Pearl also serves as a symbol. Like the “A,” Pearl is a reminder of her adultery, a “token of her shame.” Hester often dresses Pearl in beautiful gold and red dresses, physically linking her to the letter and to Hester’s crime. It is often very helpful to be able to reference in your exam or essay some important cultural or social issues that were relevant at the time a text was first written. Use any course material you have, along with introductions to critical editions of the text and reliable resources such as those found through a library database to do a bit of research. Do not rely on websites such as wikipedia or your own knowledge of a period, as both of these may be incomplete or inaccurate. For example, if you are studying Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," it’s important to be able to speak about the condition of women in the late 19th century. Gilman was a very important feminist writer who wrote against the traditional social structure of her time, which insisted that a woman’s only place was as a wife and mother. Importantly, her arguments usually insisted that this structure harmed men as well as women -- something that is very useful to bring up in a discussion of her fiction, and something you might not know if you were only acting on “common knowledge” of the era.
لخّص كل فصل أو مشهد في نقاط فرعية بعد قراءة النص للمرة الثانية. اصنع ملف شخصي لكل شخصية رئيسية. أوجز المشاكل التي تواجهها الشخصيات. حدد إذا ما تم حل تلك المشاكل. تذكر بعض التصريحات الهامة التي تم الإدلاء بها. دون ملاحظات أكثر تفصيلًا تشمل المواضيع الرئيسية في النص ومدى أهمية دور كل شخصية فيه. دوّن أي رموز في النص وأماكن وجودها. ابحث عن الروابط المعاصرة.