7.3 Internalizing and interrogating key ideas

In addition to revisiting your notes at different times throughout the year, you might also look for opportunities to discuss key ideas with someone else - either a fellow student or someone outside of The Open University who is interested in contemporary social science debates. This can provide a helpful stimulus to internalizing them. Debating issues with someone else may well help you to generate further questions and critical observations, all part of processing and interrogating meanings. Moreover, being able to explain new ideas and concepts helps you to get ideas clear in your mind, and begins to develop your skills of representing them in your own words. It is to this crucial skill of writing in your own words that we can now turn.