One other thing that worked for me is to make sure that, whenever presented with an acronym or code word, I pronounced the word/phrase in full in my mind. Hence, AoA is never read as Ay-Oh-Ay, but as Angle of Attack. There's sooooo many buzz words that I found it really easy to get lost unless I worked that way. That may help.
p.s. Even the best text book writers forget that us newbies are, umm, new, occasionally. I found this little beauty in my cross country text last night. After explaining the first part of a SIGMET in detail, he concludes with "From there, the message is straightforward." The 'straightforward' part of the message was:
HVY DS OBS AND FCST WI YBHI-TOOM-YLEC BLW A050 MOV SE 20KT NC
I'd hate to see an obfuscated version...