Study
Skills
|
Strategies for Effective Learning
|
Managing Your Time & Study Environment
[Get More Details]
|
- 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.
|
Reading College Texts
[Get More Details] |
- 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.
|
Listening, Note-Taking, and Using Visual Organizers
[Get More Details] |
- 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.
|
Research and Writing Papers
[Get More Details] |
- 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.
|
Taking Tests
[Get More Details] |
- 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.
|