7 How Do I Study?
Jennie wasn’t satisfied with her study habits. Oh, Jennie was earnest enough. It wasn’t as if Jennie shirked off studying. Instead, she was reasonably disciplined about her studies. Yet Jennie lately felt as if she was just going through the motions without genuinely applying herself to her studies. And she didn’t know what to do to make better use of her study time and effort. Jennie had gone to the school’s academic-resource center for tips. But there, she pretty much found only the same methods she had been using. What Jennie needed was some deeper insight into how studying actually worked.
Studying
In formal programs of instruction, the instructor generally provides at least some guide, and often substantial guides, for how students should study. The instructor may assign a reading that includes questions to answer. The instructor may then give a lecture or presentation in class, expecting students to take notes. The instructor may then guide students through an in-class exercise designed to help students put to use the knowledge the instructor just shared and skills the instructor just demonstrated. And the instructor may send students home with problems to solve, questions to answer, or papers to write, further putting the new knowledge and skills to use. Certainly, do as your instructor requires or recommends. Yet also gauge and adjust your studies against the following helpful practices. By adopting the following practices, you may be able to do significantly better with the methods and resources your instructor shares or doesn’t share. Later chapters share advice regarding reading, writing, problem solving, and other specific study practices.
Generating
A prior chapter already urged that you make your studies active rather than leave them passive. Whatever your instructor recommends or requires, such as reading, listening, watching, writing, or other practice, find ways to increase your active and creative engagement with those means and methods. Yet consider here what active engagement entails and why it works. Your best form of actively engaged study requires that you generate responses. To put it another way, it’s not what goes into you when you study that counts most. It’s instead what comes out of you that counts more for improving your studies. The effect of your generating responses is generally far more powerful than your simply absorbing stimuli from a reading, lecture, demonstration, or other resource. So, when reading, make a point of answering aloud, or at least silently if the circumstances only permit it, any questions you encounter in the reading. Better yet, generate and answer your own questions over the reading. Yet even the simplest generations, like correcting errors in the instructor’s materials, can produce positive learning effects. Be generative in your study practices, and watch for the positive benefits. Generally, the more you produce, the greater the effect.
Elaborating
You’ve just considered the positive effect on learning of generating responses to instructional materials. Another way of practicing that strategy is to elaborate your learning. If, for instance, you read a passage in your instructional materials that you know carries a high priority for your learning, then stop and repeat to yourself what you just read. Putting things in your own words can be a powerful elaboration strategy. As you do so, you will be recalling, rehearsing, and testing your memory. If you stumble in your articulation, you can immediately correct and complete it with a reread of the missed information. Answering questions over a lecture or reading, discussing a new unit with a study partner, and explaining what you just learned to a family member or friend are other forms of elaboration. Try spinning out scenarios to which the new knowledge would apply. Picture the settings in which you would deploy the new knowledge. Question, test, extend, and elaborate it. And you’ll likely find your learning improving.
Anchoring
Anchoring your new learning firmly in your prior existing knowledge is another important technique for studying. Instruction seldom starts out entirely fresh. Nearly everything we learn builds on something else. The clearer and stronger you can make those connections between your new learning and your prior learning, the better you will tend to learn the new knowledge. Thus, whenever beginning a new unit, identify and review whatever prior unit or learning you already completed to which the new unit attaches. Confirm that you can recall the prior terms that you learned and their relationships, so that you can apply those already-learned terms when used in the new instruction. The failure of much new learning has to do with the inability to recall and draw on the prior learning that the new learning presumes you have accomplished. Students sometimes think of it as the black-hole syndrome, where a gap or hole in your learning sucks everything else away into it. Reduce the holes in your learning by reviewing your prior learning, and then anchoring your new learning solidly to it.
Prioritizing
Another practice to follow while studying is to prioritize whatever new information you encounter. You can’t comprehend, retain, and recall everything that instruction presents to you. Learning inevitably requires selecting the priority information to comprehend, retain, rehearse, and recall. Sound instruction generally highlights the priority information, placing it first for primacy, last for recency, and otherwise in emphasis. Readings, for instance, use headings, subheadings, abstracts, summaries, bullet points, boldface font, and italics to mark out priority information. Lectures may adopt similar tactics in oral and, with an accompanying slide show, graphic form. But instruction isn’t always well designed. Readings and lectures may not call out priority information. You may instead have to continually evaluate the information for priority as you encounter it. When taking notes, for instance, don’t simply transcribe. Instead, note the priority information, particularly terms, definitions, and their relationships. If your notes later look like transcription, reorganize them to highlight the critical information, without which other subsidiary information lacks any connection and makes less sense.
Clarifying
Clarifying vague and ambiguous information is another studying skill important to your learning. Again, as with prioritizing information, instructors and the materials they offer and assign should be clear in communicating the knowledge you need to learn. Terms should be consistent, with reasonably clear and consistent meaning. Relationships among terms should be stable and reliable. Routines and procedures should be complete with all steps in order and understandable. If, instead, your instructor or materials are unclear, then clarify them. Look up ambiguous or undefined terms for their definitions. Confirm the proper order of the steps in each routine, and be sure you understand the actions necessary with each step. Anywhere you see ambiguity, resolve it. Do not let a weak link in your studies destroy the whole chain. Clarify and confirm until your comprehension is confident, clear, and certain.
Examples
Generating examples and non-examples is an excellent way to confirm and clarify your comprehension. Well-designed instructional resources generally include multiple examples of terms and concepts. One example isn’t enough to confirm a concept because the student may then associate all of the example’s features with the concept, when only some features illustrate the concept. A bear is an example of a mammal because of its warm blood, fur, and nursed young, not because of its big paws and funny round ears. Multiple examples cancel out the irrelevant features. Non-examples strengthen comprehension of a term. Confirming that neither a frog nor a fish are a mammal further confirms the term. Near examples and non-examples, close to the boundary line, sharpen understanding even further. Birds, reptiles, and amphibians are not mammals. A whale and platypus? Discerning their anomalies sharpens the picture. Whether your instructor and resources give examples or not, sharpen your studies by generating your own examples and non-examples, while articulating their distinguishing features.
Practice
Practicing the processes, solutions, or routines that instruction introduces is another critical study habit. Sound instruction and resources will generally show worked examples of solutions, processes, and routines. Your instruction should generally show you the steps and explain and demonstrate them sufficiently so that you understand them. But don’t think you know the process until you have practiced it multiple times. The demonstration may have conditions and features that the routine does not require and that differ from the conditions and features under which you must perform. Practicing the routine repeatedly under different conditions and with different features confirms for you the routine’s essential features. The strategy of varied practice works just as well for learning how to solve the quadratic equation as it does for learning how to disassemble and assemble a gun.
Chunking
Processing new information in the right-sized groups, bits, or chunks is another sound strategy to improve learning. That’s generally why we study subjects in units. Units help us master one knowledge or skill set before attempting another set. Chunking information into digestible units can be especially important when attempting to follow a complex routine. You can’t master the quadratic equation, for instance, without first knowing multiplication, division, solving for variables, and square roots. When you find that your instruction hasn’t properly chunked, ordered, and paced your studies, break the unit down. Find the specific routines you need to master, and identify your errors in any of those routines to correct them, in order to proceed. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t let information overwhelm you. See the big picture so that you know where the small parts fit. But start by learning the small parts before trying to assemble them into a full and polished routine.
Associating
Associating or linking concepts, one with another into memorable chains, is another strategy that can aid learning. We tend to think of memory as pulling rabbits out of a hat, that is, pulling information wholesale out of a black hole. But memory can behave more like linked concepts, one concept triggering another. A question triggers an answer because of the answer’s association or link with key words in the question. If, for instance, you are trying to remember a new acquaintance’s name, you may do best by picturing the acquaintance’s face, feeling the acquaintance’s handshake, or picturing the setting in which you met the acquaintance when you first learned the name. If, for another example, you are trying to remember the name of a leading actress in a certain film, then try first recalling the name of the leading actor with whom your memory may associate the actress’s name. Strengthen associations when learning. Indeed, creating artificial associations can be a great learning aid. Can’t remember the Great Lakes? Try the mnemonic HOMES. Can’t remember the rainbow’s colors? Try the mnemonic ROY G BIV. Other association aids include rhyming and the memory palace or loci technique. Remembering is associating, not pulling rabbits out of deep black hats.
Reinforcing
Studying effectively also generally takes some kind of reinforcement. If, for instance, you are trying to learn a new procedure in order to be able to consistently execute it without error, you would generally want close and continuous reinforcement your first time through it. Instructors may, for instance, carefully guide a novice through a first attempt, immediately intervening to correct small departures from the routine, while providing more-or-less continuous reinforcement as the novice moves successfully through the routine. If you are learning something new, seek and accept close and continuous reinforcement, whether from an instructor, training video, instruction manual, answer key, or the like. You’ll need continuous reinforcement to learn the procedure. But as soon as you learn the procedure, you need to begin withdrawing the reinforcement or you will not learn as quickly or surely. Intermittent reinforcement becomes both more powerful and more necessary than continuous reinforcement. Don’t, in other words, rely on the crutch. Gently set aside the crutch as you learn, and then cast it fully aside as you refine your performance. The intrinsic reward of successful performance must soon replace artificial reinforcement.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how do you rate your study practices? How active or generative are you in studying? Do you commonly use any specific elaboration or self-interrogation techniques, to increase your activity and generation? Can you think of an instance when you had lost the thread or memory of your prior learning, so that you were unable to learn new material as quickly as you wished? How strong is your skill at recognizing priority concepts when first introduced to you? Or do you too often get lost in the details? Does it bother you sufficiently to investigate and clarify, when you don’t understand something in the new unit you are learning? How skilled are you at generating examples and non-examples of new terms and concepts you learn? Would more practice doing so strengthen your learning? Do you seek out practice questions, tests, problems, and routines, or instead try to avoid them? Do you know how to separate your studies into manageable chunks? Do you use any techniques for association, like mnemonics or rhyming?
Key Points
Supplement the study methods and resources your instruction offers.
Generate responses whenever studying, to increase your engagement.
Elaborating new knowledge in your own words increases retention.
Anchoring new knowledge in past learning aids comprehension.
Prioritizing new knowledge reduces sensory overload.
Clarifying terms and routines can be critical to retention and recall.
Generating examples and non-examples confirms comprehension.
Practice routines under different conditions and with different items.
Chunk studies into manageable parts to ensure sound learning.
Make connections and associations to increase memory and recall.
Reinforce new learning continuously before gradually withdrawing.