Study Skills Guides

Make sure to take legible and accurate notes since it is not uncommon to forget key details discussed during class after it has ended. Frequently, students comprehend the teacher's lecture and think they'll remember everything, so they neglect to jot down specific details only to find later that they can't recall what it was they needed to remember.

Students who keep accurate notes can review them later to review key points, recall necessary detail, solidify knowledge and study up on concepts they didn't fully comprehend during the lecture. Additionally, since teachers frequently cover many topics during the course of their lectures, effective notes enable students to concentrate on specific topics that are most relevant. Students properly prepared for class usually take better notes than those who come unprepared. Proper preparation includes completing assigned reading prior to class and reviewing notes from previous lectures.

Students who review their notes from previous lectures 1 will have a better context for learning new topics presented in the next lecture and 2 can ask questions about confusing concepts the didn't quite understand from the previous lecture. To ensure your notes are as accurate and detailed as possible, compare them with the notes of other students after class is over.

This is useful because your colleagues will frequently write down lecture details that you forgot or missed. This strategy will make classroom notes more thorough and precise. Effective note takers avoid classroom distractions. This can include sitting in spots with fewer distractions and not signing up for classes with friends that you might want to talk with during lectures. Some students will even sit in spots where it is difficult to constantly glance at the clock. Notes organized by date, class, and subject make it easier to locate specific lecture details.

It is also a good idea to keep information from different dates and classes separated or to begin each class with a new piece of paper. Precis annotation, Organizing question annotation, Intentional annotation and Probe annotation are some of the annotation methods used. There are a variety of studies from different colleges nationwide that show peer-communication can help increase better study habits tremendously.

Speed reading, while trainable, results in lower accuracy, comprehension, and understanding [12]. 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.

Study skills - Wikipedia

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. Such as outlines showing keywords and definitions and relations, usually in a tree structure. 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.

Navigation menu

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 learners are thought to have a visual learning style , and will benefit greatly from taking information from their studies which are often heavily verbal, and using visual techniques to help encode and retain it in memory.

Some memory techniques make use of visual memory, for example the method of loci , a system of visualising key information in real physical locations e. Diagrams are often underrated tools. 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. Some 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 " N ever E at S hredded W heat".


  • Search form.
  • FIRST STEPS IN IMAGE PROCESSING - HOW TO GET STARTED AND SEE YOUR PICTURES AT THEIR BEST (POPULAR GUIDES TO GREAT PHOTOGRAPHY Book 9)!
  • La piel del miedo (Spanish Edition)!
  • Study Skills Guide: Study Tips, Strategies & Lessons for Students?

Starting with North , the first letter of each word relates to a compass point in clockwise order round a compass. The Black-Red-Green method developed through the Royal Literary Fund helps the student to ensure that every aspect of the question posed has been considered, both in exams and essays. RE d is a RE ference Point or RE quired input of some kind, usually to do with definitions, terms, cited authors, theory, etc. Another popular method whilst studying is to P. Many Schools will encourage practicing the P.

Top 10 Study Skills

BEing method prior to an exam. Spacing , also called distributed learning by some; helps individuals remember at least as much if not more information for a longer period of time than using only one study skill. Then break up the material into logical parts that you study separately. At the end, go back and review everything from beginning to end. This method is particularly effective for long and difficult material. With this approach, you break up the material into sections and begin studying the first part. Then you move on to studying the second part but you study the first part again along with the second part.

When studying the third part, you also review the first and second parts. You continue this way all through the material. This progressive learning approach helps prevent you from forgetting the material you learned at the beginning as you go along, and it also helps you organize all the material conceptually in your brain. In other words, it's easier to remember "the big picture" as you progress through what you are studying using this method.

The order in which items in a list are organized can affect how easy it is to learn them. This is known as the serial position effect. It turns out that items at the beginning and the end are easiest to remember, while the items in the middle are the hardest to remember. Also, the last few items are easier to remember than the first items. If you are allowed to rearrange: If the items do not need to be in a certain order, arrange your list so the more complicated, less meaningful items are at the beginning and the end of the list.

Put the simpler, more meaningful items in the middle. If you are not allowed to rearrange: If you can't change the order of the items, spend more time and effort studying the items in the middle. So the next time you need to learn a list or group of facts, such as a list of spelling words or material from a lecture - try rearranging the information, or spend more time studying the middle.

Best Study Skills 4: The fourth of the best study skills is recitation, which means saying back to yourself the information you just learned. Besides improving your memory of the material, reciting helps you avoid the illusions of competence trap. Every so often when studying, pause, look away from the material, and try to remember the facts of what you just learned. If you cannot, it's an indication you need to go back and re-read it. There are various ways you can do recitation to improve your memory of the material. For example, consider repeating the information out loud as Abraham Lincoln famously did for memorization tasks.

Verbal repetition forces you to pay better attention. When starting your study session, begin by reading through the section headings of the chapter. After doing so, look away and try to recall them. If you have trouble doing this, consider linking them using the image-based Link memory system. You can use the headings themselves as a memory aid. Recall each chapter heading, then try to explain to yourself the contents of that chapter section. If you cannot do so adequately, that's a signal you should spend more time studying that section.


  1. Study Skills Guide: Note Taking Strategies, Techniques and Methods.
  2. Introduction.
  3. The Construction Zone: Working for Cognitive Change in School (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives).
  4. Top 10 Study Skills – University of Lynchburg!
  5. Cauchy3-Book-61-poems?
  6. Mommy, Where Do All the Flowers Come From?.
  7. Research supports the use of flash cards as an effective means of creating a strong memory of the material. Flash cards are small, blank cards, often 3" x 5" in size in the U. You can make your own flash cards or use premade sets of cards. Here's an example of a vocabulary flash card that I made:.

    I've written the fact I want to remember on the front of the flash card and the definition on the back. Quickly flipping through a stack of flash cards is a great way to quickly recite and test your memory for a large amount of material. Flash cards can be made for many types of subject matter.

    General Study Skills Guides

    Other common examples include math flash cards to memorize basic math facts, and sight words flash cards to memorize how to spell basic English language vocabulary. Another good recitation strategy is to get with a partner and quiz each other. This is most effective when each partner has already done significant studying, of course.

    Not only should each partner ask for simple facts from the material, but it is especially helpful if partners make up questions for the other partner to answer. Recitation is one of the best study skills because it forces you to do several important things that aid memory:. Recitation is active learning which engages more than one of your senses;. Recitation gives you feedback so you know what part of the material you need to spend more time on;. Not only that, but reciting is actually good practice for exam time.

    Think about it; recitation is exactly what you do when being tested. During the exam, you try to recall the material as accurately as possible from memory. It makes perfect sense to practice during your study sessions what you are going to be doing on the test. You should spend as much time reciting as possible.


    1. Swimming in Shallow Water.
    2. Improving Your Note Taking.
    3. Study skills.
    4. The Best Study Skills - Five Strategies Every Student Should Know.
    5. .
    6. Javoue que jai trahi: Essai libre sur la traduction (Recherches et documents Amériques latines) (French Edition);
    7. Helstrip.
    8. Rather than re-reading the chapter over and over, recite the facts in the chapter from memory until you know them very well. The fifth of the best study skills is the use of a "study system". A study system is simply a standard method of approaching the study of any material. Quite a few of these systems have been created over the years.

      One of the oldest and best-known study system is "SQ3R". This is similar in concept to the "whole learning" mentioned above. However, instead of trying to learn the material in detail, when surveying you just want to understand the framework of the information. To survey the material, read the various structural parts quickly without digging too deep. It's almost like forming a mental outline. Read the preface, table of contents, and the chapter summaries. Read all the main headings and subheadings within the chapters.

      Study Skills for Students

      Carefully examine any graphs or pictures, and read the captions. When surveying you want to study everything except the actual meat of the material. After completing your survey, again go through the same parts you just surveyed and ask yourself questions about each one. For example, if you are beginning to study a math chapter on the quadratic formula, ask yourself questions like "What is the quadratic formula, and why is it important?

      Thinking of questions keeps you focused and really engages you with the material. Even before reading the details, you will already be thinking deeply about the content.