Jacob Lund / Shutterstock
There’s obviously no point in studying if you don’t remember what you went over when it’s time for the test and one of the best ways to retain that knowledge is to maintain a particularly strict study schedule. The technique is called “distributed practice,” and here’s how it works…….Continue reading….
By: Lindsey Ellefson
Source: Lifehacker
.
Critics:
Study skills are an array of skills which tackle the process of organizing and taking in new information, retaining information, or dealing with assessments. They are discrete techniques that can be learned, usually in a short time, and applied to all or most fields of study. More broadly, any skill which boosts a person’s ability to study, retain and recall information which assists in and passing exams can be termed a study skill, and this could include time management and motivational techniques.
Some examples are mnemonics, which aid the retention of lists of information; effective reading; concentration techniques; and efficient note taking. Due to the generic nature of study skills, they must, therefore, be distinguished from strategies that are specific to a particular field of study (e.g. music or technology), and from abilities inherent in the student, such as aspects of intelligence or personality.
It is crucial in this, however, for students to gain initial insight into their habitual approaches to study, so they may better understand the dynamics and personal resistances to learning new techniques. Memorization is the process of committing something to memory, often by rote. The act of memorization is often a deliberate mental process undertaken in order to store information in one’s memory for later recall.
This information can be experiences, names, appointments, addresses, telephone numbers, lists, stories, poems, pictures, maps, diagrams, facts, music or other visual, auditory, or tactical information. Memorization may also refer to the process of storing particular data into the memory of a device. One of the most basic approaches to learning any information is simply to repeat it by rote. Typically this will include reading over notes or a textbook and re-writing notes.
The weakness of rote learning is that it implies a passive reading and listening style. Educators such as John Dewey have argued that students need to learn critical thinking – questioning and weighing up evidence as they learn. This can be done during lectures or when reading books. A method that is useful during the first interaction with the subject of study is REAP method.
This method helps students to improve their understanding of the text and bridge the idea with that of the author’s. REAP is an acronym for Read, Encode, Annotate and Ponder.
- Read: Reading a section to discern the idea.
- Encode: Paraphrasing the idea from the author’s perspective to the student’s own words.
- Annotate: Annotating the section with critical understanding and other relevant notes.
- Ponder: To ponder about what they read through thinking, discussing with others and reading related materials. Thus it allows the possibility of elaboration and fulfillment of zone of proximal development.
Annotating and Encoding helps reprocess content into concise and coherent knowledge which adds to a meaningful symbolic fund of knowledge. Precise annotation, Organizing question annotation, Intentional annotation, and Probe annotation are some of the annotation methods used. A method used to focus on key information when studying from books uncritically is the PQRST method.
This method prioritizes the information in a way that relates directly to how they will be asked to use that information in an exam. PQRST is an acronym for Preview, Question, Read, Summary, Test.
- Preview: The student looks at the topic to be learned by glancing over the major headings or the points in the syllabus.
- Question: The student formulates questions to be answered following a thorough examination of the topic(s).
- Read: The student reads through the related material, focusing on the information that best relates to the questions formulated earlier.
- Summary: The student summarizes the topic, bringing his or her own understanding of the process. This may include written notes, spider diagrams, flow diagrams, labeled diagrams, mnemonics, or even voice recordings.
- Test: The student answers the questions drafted earlier, avoiding adding any questions that might distract or change the subject.
There are a variety of studies from different colleges nationwide that show peer-communication can help increase better study habits tremendously. One study shows that an average of 73% score increase was recorded by those who were enrolled in the classes surveyed. In order to make reading or reviewing material more engaging and active, learners can create cues that will stimulate recall later on.
A cue can be a word, short phrase, or song that helps the learner access a memory that was encoded intentionally with this prompt in mind. The use of cues to aid memory has been popular for many years, however, research suggests that adopting cues made by others is not as effective as cues that learners create themselves. Self-testing is another effective practice, when preparing for exams or other standardized memory recall situations.
Many students prepare for exams by simply rereading textbook passages or materials. However, it’s likely that this can create a false sense of understanding because of the increased familiarity that students have with passages that they have reviewed recently or frequently. Instead, in 2006, Roediger and Karpicke studied eighth-grade students’ performance on history exams.
Their results showed that students who tested themselves on material they had learned, rather than simply reviewing or rereading subjects had both better and longer lasting retention. The term Testing Effect is used to describe this increase in memory performance. Taking notes by using a computer can also deter impactful learning, even when students are using computers solely for the purpose note-taking and are not attempting to multitask, during lectures or study sessions.
This is likely due to shallower processing from students using computers to take notes. Taking notes on a computer often ushers a tendency for students to record lectures verbatim, instead of writing the points of a lecture in their own words. Speed reading, while trainable, results in lower accuracy, comprehension, and understanding. Flashcards are visual cues on cards. These have numerous uses in teaching and learning but can be used for revision.
Students often make their own flashcards, or more detailed index cards – cards designed for filing, often A5 size, on which short summaries are written. Being discrete and separate, they have the advantage of allowing students to re-order them, pick a selection to read over, or choose randomly for self-testing. Software equivalents can be used. Summary methods vary depending on the topic, but most involve condensing the large amount of information from a course or book into shorter notes. Often, these notes are then condensed further into key facts.
Organized summaries: Such as outlines showing keywords and definitions and relations, usually in a tree structure. Spider diagrams: Using spider diagrams or mind maps can be an effective way of linking concepts together. They can be useful for planning essays and essay responses in exams. These tools can give a visual summary of a topic that preserves its logical structure, with lines used to show how different parts link together.
Some memory techniques make use of visual memory. One popular memory enhancing technique is the method of loci, a system of visualizing key information in real physical locations e.g. around a room. Diagrams are often underrated tools. They can be used to bring all the information together and provide practice reorganizing what has been learned in order to produce something practical and useful.
They can also aid the recall of information learned very quickly, particularly if the student made the diagram while studying the information. Pictures can then be transferred to flashcards that are very effective last-minute revision tools rather than rereading any written material.
A mnemonic is a method of organizing and memorizing information. There are four main types of mnemonic: (1) Narrative (relying on a story of some kind, or a sequence of real or imagined events); (2) Sonic/Textual (using rhythm or repeated sound, such as rhyme, or memorable textual patterns such as acronyms); (3) Visual (diagrams, mind maps, graphs, images, etc.); (4) ‘Topical’ (meaning ‘place-dependent’, for instance, using features of a familiar room, building or set of landmarks as a way of coding and recalling sequenced facts).
Some mnemonics use a simple phrase or fact as a trigger for a longer list of information. For example, the cardinal points of the compass can be recalled in the correct order with the phrase “Never Eat Shredded Wheat”. Starting with North, the first letter of each word relates to a compass point in clockwise order round a compass.
Leave a Reply