STUDY SKILLS AND HABITS By K.ilayaraja.
Today, many students enter professional with poor study skills and habits – and it’s not entirely their fault. Our educational system generally provides minimal instruction on good study techniques.
I will try to remedy this situation to some extent by reviewing some insights that psychology offers on how to improve performance in study.
Today, educational psychology is a major area of specialization in the field.
Drawing mainly from research in this area, I will discuss here,
How to promote better study habits,
How to enhance reading efforts,
How to get more out of lectures and
How to improve test – taking strategies.
A. DEVELOPING SOUND STUDY HABITS :
Effective study is crucial to success in professional. Although you may
run into few friends who boast about getting good marks without
Studying, you can be sure that if they perform well on exams, they do study.
Students who claim otherwise simply want to be viewed as extremely bright
rather than studious.
Learning can be immensely gratifying, but studying usually involves hard work.
The first step toward effective study habits is to face up to this reality.
You don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t look forward to studying. Most
Students don’t.
Once you accept the premise that studying doesn’t come naturally, it should be apparent that you need to set up an organized program to promote adequate study.
According to walter and siebert, such a program should include the following considerations:
1. Set up a schedule for studying
If you wait until the urge to study strikes you, you may still be waiting when the exam rolls around. Thus, it is important to allocate definite times to studying.
Review your various time obligations (work, chores and so on), and figure out in advance when you can study.
When allotting certain times to studying, keep in mind that you need to be wide awake and alert.
Be realistic about how long you can study at one time before you wear down from fatigue.
Allow time for study breaks – they can revive sagging concentration.
It’s important to write down your study schedule. A written schedule serves as a reminder and increases your commitment to following it.
You should begin by setting up a general weekly activity schedule for examination.
Then, at the beginning of each week, plan the specific assignments that you intend to work on during each study session.
This approach to scheduling should help you avoid cramming for exams at the last minute. Cramming is an ineffective study strategy for most students.
It tends to strain your memorization capabilities, tax your energy level and stoke the fires of test anxiety.
In planning your weekly schedule, try to avoid the tendency to put off working on major tasks such as term papers and reports.
Time-management experts point out that many of us tend to tackle simple, routine tasks first saving larger tasks for later when we supposedly will have more time.
This common tendency leads many of us to repeatedly delay working on major assignments until its too late to do a good job.
You can avoid this trap by breaking major assignments down into smaller component tasks that can be scheduled individually.
Some additional guidelines that promote efficient time management are:
1. Set aside times and places for work.
2. Set priorities and then do things in priority order.
3. Break large tasks into much smaller ones.
4. Keep the tasks planned for a day down to a reasonable number.
5. Work on one thing (an important task) at a time.
6. Define all tasks specifically (in terms of what you want to have written or want to be able to recall, and so forth)
7. Check your progress often.
2. Find a place to study where you can concentrate.
Where you study is also important. The key is to find a place where distractions are likely to be minimal.
Don’t depend on will power to carry you through such distractions.
It is much easier to plan ahead and avoid the distractions altogether.
It helps to set up one or two specific places for study.
If possible, they should be used for nothing else.
These places can become strongly associated with studying, so that they serve as cues for good study behavior.
In contrast, places that are associated with other activities may serve as cues for these other activities.
For example, studying in your kitchen may evoke more eating than reading.
3. Reward your studying.
One reason that it is so difficult to be motivated to study regularly is that the payoffs often lie in the distant future.
The ultimate reward, CA (a degree), may be years away.
To combat this problem, it helps to give yourself immediate tangible rewards for studying, such as a snack, TV show, or phone call to a friend.
Thus, you should set realistic study goals for yourself and then reward yourself when you meet them.
Note: Achieving self-control through behavior modification is important.
Behavior modification is
A systematic approach to changing behavior through the application of the principles of conditioning.
B. IMPROVING YOUR READING
Much of your study time is spent reading and absorbing information. These efforts must be active. Many students deceive themselves into thinking that they are studying by running a marker through a few sentences here and there in their book.
If they do so without thoughtful selectivity, they are simply turning a textbook into a coloring book.
You can use a number of strategies to actively attack your reading assignments.
One of the more worthwhile ways is Robinson’s SQ3R method.
SQ3R is a study system designed to promote effective readings which includes five steps:
Survey
Question
Read
Recite and
Review
Its name is an acronym for the five steps in the procedure.
STEP 1: SURVEY
Before you plunge into the reading itself, glance over the topic headings in the chapter. Try to get a general over view of the material. Try to understand how the various chapter segments are related.
If there is a chapter outline or summary, consult it to get a general feel for the chapter. The point is, if you know where the chapter is going, you can better appreciate and organize the information you are about to read.
SEPT 2: QUESTION:
Once you have an overview of your reading assignment, you should proceed through it one section at a time.
Take a look at the heading of the first section and convert it into a question.
This is usually quite simple.
If the heading is “prenatal Risk Factors”, your question should be
“What are sources of risk during prenatal development?”
If the heading is “stereotyping”, your question should be
“What is stereotyping?’’
Asking these questions gets you actively involved in your reading and helps you identify the main ideas.
STEP 3: READ
Only now, in the third step, are you ready to sink your teeth into the reading.
Read only the specific section that you have decided to tackle.
Read it with an eye toward answering the question you have first formulated.
If necessary, reread the section until you can answer that question.
Decide whether the segment addresses any other important questions and answer them as well.
STEP 4: RECITE
Now that you can answer the key question for the section, recite the answer out loud to yourself in your own words.
Don’t move on the next section until you understand the main idea(s) of the current section.
When you have fully digested the first section, then you may go on to the next.
Repeat steps 2 through 4 with the next section.
Once you have mastered the crucial points there, you can go on again.
Keep repeating steps 2 through 4, section by section, until you finish the chapter.
STEP 5: REVIEW
When you have read the entire chapter, refresh you memory by going back over the key points. Repeat your questions and try to answer them without consulting your book or notes.
This review should fortify your retention of the main ideas.
It should also help you see how the main ideas are related.
The SQ3R method does not have to be applied rigidly. For example, it is often wise to break your reading assignment into smaller segments than those separated by section headings. In fact, SQ3R should probably be applied paragraph basis. Obviously, this will require you to formulate some questions without the benefit of topic headings, you can simply reverse the order of steps 2 and 3. Read the paragraph first and then formulate a question that addresses the basic idea of the paragraph. Then work at answering the question in your own words. The point is that you can be flexible in your use of the SQ3R technique. What makes SQ3R effective is that it breaks a reading assignment into manageable parts and requires understanding before you move on. Any method that accomplishes these goals should enhance your reading.
Besides topic headings, your text – books may contain various other learning aids you can use to improve your reading. If a book provides a chapter outline, don’t ignore them. They can help you recognize the important points in the chapter. Good learning objectives practically formulate the questions for you in the SQ3R process (learning objectives for this text Guide). A lot of thought goes into these and other learning aids. It is wise to take advantage of them.
C.GETTING MORE OUT OF LECTURES
Although lectures are sometimes boring and tedious, it is a simple fact that poor class attendance or poor self study is associated with poor marks.
Even when you have an instructor who delivers hard – to – follow lectures, it is still important to go to class. If nothing else, you can get a feel for how the instructor thinks, which can help you anticipate the content of exams and respond in the manner expected by your professor.
Fortunately, most lectures are reasonably coherent, and research indicates that accurate note taking is related to better test performance. Good note taking requires you to actively process lecture information in ways that should enhance both memory and understanding. Studies show that attentive note taking helps students to identify and remember the most important points from a lecture and to weed out ideas of lesser importance.
Einstein, Morris, and Smith conducted a study in which they had undergraduate subjects either just listen to or take notes on a videotaped lecture. What these researchers found when they measured the students recall of the lecture material later. That is note taking did not produce better recall of information that was of low or medium importance.
Instead, it selectively enhanced only the recall of important information. Books on study skills offer a number of suggestions on how to take good lecture notes. Some of these are summarized here.
1. Extracting information from lectures requires active listening. Focus full attention on the speaker. Try to anticipate what’s coming and search for deeper meanings. Pay attention to nonverbal signals that may further clarify the lecturer’s intent or meaning.
- When course material is especially complex, it is a good idea to prepare for the lecture by reading ahead on the scheduled subject in your text. Then you have less brand – new information to digest.
- You are not supposed to be a human tape recorder. Insofar as possible, try to write down the lecturer’s thoughts in your own words. Doing so forces you to organize the ideas in a way that makes sense to you. In taking notes, pay attention to clues about what is most important. These clues may range from subtle hints, such as an instructor repeating a point, to not – so – subtle hints, such as an instructor saying “ You’ll run into this again. “
- Asking questions during lectures can be helpful. Doing so keeps you actively involved in the lecture and allows you to clarify points that you may have misunderstood. Many students are more bashful about asking questions than they should be. They don’t realize that most professors welcome questions. Of course, a large class size places some limits on the extent to which each student can question the instructor.
D. IMPROVING TEST – TAKING STRATEGIES
Let’s face it – some students are better than others at taking tests. Testwiseness is the ability to use the characteristics and format of a cognitive test to maximize one’s score. Students clearly vary in testwiseness, and such variations are reflected in performance on exams. Testwiseness is not a substitute for knowledge of the subject matter. However, skill in taking tests can help you show what you know when it is critical to do so.
Principles of testwiseness:
- If efficient time use appears crucial, set up a mental schedule for progressing through the test. Make a mental note to check whether you’re one – third finished when a third of your times is gone.
- Don’t waste time pondering difficult – to – answer questions excessively. If you need to devote a good deal of time to the question, skip it and mark it so you can return to it later if time permits.
- Adopt the appropriate level of sophistication for the test. Don’t read things into questions. Sometimes students make things more complex than they were intended to be. Often, simple – looking questions are just what they appear to be.
- Unless it is explicitly forbidden, don’t hesitate to ask the examiner to clarify a question when necessary. Many examiners will graciously provide a great deal of useful information.
- If you complete all of the questions and still have some time remaining, review the test. Make sure that you have recorded your answers correctly. If you were unsure of some answers, go back and reconsider them.
In summary, sound study skills and habits are crucial to professional. Intelligence alone won’t do the job (although it certainly help). Good professional skills do not develop overnight. They are acquired gradually, so be patient with yourself. Fortunately, tasks such as reading textbooks, writing papers, and taking tests get easier with practice. Ultimately, I think you’ll find that the rewards – knowledge, a sense of accomplishment, and progress toward CA (a degree) –are worth the effort.
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How to get a rank in CA?
by Vidhyashankar on 08 June 2009
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points :
· Atleast 10 to 12 hours of prep is needed to get a rank for atleast 8 to 12 months before the exam.No escaping this.Maybe with very clever study tehcniques and an even cleverer mind one can crush this time-factor a bit.
· Use of proper study and retention techniques is a must
· Proper revision plan is a must.
· Proper ammunition(books and reference material) is sinequanon for this.
· Proper association with friends and instant dissociation with those who discourage you (be it even your CA firm) is a must.
· Timing and exam practice is important.
· Learning to relax well is a must.I used Taoist breathing techniques to relax myself.
· Learning to not get distracted from the goal.
· Learning to pep oneself up on a day-to-day basis and taking each day as the first day in the rest of your life.
· Learning to adjust the bio-clock to the exam time.For example: If the attempt given has the exam time during afternoon, its best not to sleep during that time in study holidays.JKeep the bio-clock as nature has intended it. We change it in between to our detriment.
· Belief in God helps.
· Judicious selection of coaching centres and Subjects for coaching.No use wasting time for useless subjects.(Commutation itself in cities is a pain in the neck with inordinate pollution levels.Its just not worth the effort)
· Have courage.
· Practice writing, develop a neat handwriting. Be conceptually strong.
· Do atleast 500 problems/question in each subject.Repeat the 500 target over and over again and mastered the whole subject in the process.
· Have 2 reference books per subject.This is my unique advice.I have spoken about the logic earlier,read it.One is a bedrock book to follow in and out and the second is kept as a reference.Study materail in cases like MICS can be kept as the bedrock book.
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· Take care of your health. Tack healthy foods.
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· Create memory lists and read them day in and day out.This will etch the sections and concepts in memory.
· Use visualization techniques to create your own reality.I used creative visalization by Shakthi Gawain to produce fantastic results and also relax.
· Be abreast with latest info in the field(without becoming paranoid about things).
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