Study
Skills
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Strategies for Effective Learning
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Managing Your Time & Study Environment
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- Determine your goals, values, and priorities.
- Evaluate your schedule and make adjustments
as appropriate.
- Get a plan before starting a task. Set time limits to stay focused.
- Break tasks into manageable (and meaningful) chunks.
- Stay caught up with reading and assignments.
- Have a strategy for taking tests. Monitor
your time.
- Web sites on managing your time
and study environment.
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Reading College Texts
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- Preview - survey the material to get the big picture
before reading the material.
- Question - set your purpose; ask what you already know.
Ask what's important to understand from this assignment.
- Read - read for meaning and annotate
text. If you don't understand, adjust your strategy i.e.,
re-read or read slower.
- Recite - summarize what you just read by saying it or
writing it in your own words. Make a note of questions that occur
to you as your read.
- Review - go over it regularly
so it stays fresh.
- Web sites on these and other topics
on reading college texts.
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Listening, Note-Taking, and Using Visual Organizers
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- Preview text and list questions to help focus your listening
during lectures.
- Use Cornell notes or mapping
for class notes depending on the style in which information is
presented.
- Annotate - make margin notes in
text to label information; circle important terms and concepts,
underline important details; summarize, and note questions you
have about the material.
- Use graphic organizers to show
relationships between concepts (i.e., Venn diagram, fishbone diagram,
feature analysis, etc.).
- Map your ideas to organize writing
for papers and tests.
- Web sites on listening, note-taking,
and using visual organizers.
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Research and Writing Papers
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- Plan ahead - develop a schedule for completing each step of
the process.
- Choose a topic.
- Do your research. Learn how to use the library and to conduct
research.
- Write the paper.
- Edit your work.
- Web sites that provide information
on research and writing papers.
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Taking Tests
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- Stay up-to-date on assignments. Learn material and review as
you go along.
- Analyze past tests to determine how
you can improve your test-taking skills.
- Ask the instructor about the test. Ask yourself what was stressed
in the text and in lectures.
- Apply stress management techniques to deal with test anxiety.
- Break up study sessions by units or chapters.
- Prepare to answer different kinds of test questions.
- Survey the test. Answer the easiest questions first, to control
anxiety. Then strategize a plan and concentrate greatest effort
on the questions that are worth the most points.
- Map responses to essay questions before writing.
- Web sites providing information
on taking tests.
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Developed by Meg Keeley
Special Populations
Office, Bucks County Community College
With funding from the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied
Technology Education Act
Designed and Produced by Chimera Studio
Copyright 1997 Bucks County Community College. All rights
reserved.
Author: keeleym@bucks.edu