UNIT
II
STUDY
SKILLS
Introduction: Study skills comprise
two peculiar words study and skill. Study means the time devoted by a
particular person to gaining knowledge of an academic subject, typically at
school, college, or university. Skill means the practiced ability to use one's
knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance. Study skill it
is an approach applied to learning. They are generally critical to success in
school, considered essential for acquiring good grades, and useful for learning
throughout one's life.
Study
skills are defined as strategies and methods to efficiently manage learning.
Study skills consist of time management strategies, note taking and active
listening abilities, and summarization and analysis skills. Study skills are an
array of skills which tackle the process of organizing and taking in new
information, retaining information, or dealing with assessments. They
include mnemonics,
which aid the retention of lists of information; effective reading;
concentration techniques; and efficient note taking.
I. Need and Importance of Study Skills:
1. Study skills are the skills you need to
enable you to study and learn efficiently they are an important set of
transferable life skills.
2. These are the most
important skills to master to get good grades. Honing your study skills not
only helps you succeed academically, it will also help you do well in life.
3. Some of the benefits
of improved study skills reduce test anxiety, increase confidence, competence,
and self esteem.
4. You will realize
that good grades are not always achieved through studying long hours. You can
cut down on the number of hours you study by studying efficiently through
knowing how to study. Once you learn these skills, you will be well
on your way to becoming the successful student you’ve always wanted to be.
Academic coaches and tutors at MyGrade Booster will give you useful tips and
tools you can adopt when you study or prepare for exams.
5. The so-called smart
students are not the ones with higher IQs. They are the students who have
mastered the art of studying efficiently.
6. The students with learning difficulties,
particularly those with LD and ADHD, students need to be explicitly taught how
to strategically approach academic tasks in order to gain and use information
effectively. In other words, they need to be taught effective study strategies,
often referred to as study skills.
7. The table below
lists several study skills strategies that can help students address their
executive function challenges and tackle academic demands in a more effective,
plan full manner.
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Processing
Information
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Retaining and
Recalling Information
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Organizing
Materials and Managing Time
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Selecting,
Monitoring, and Using Strategies
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Graphic
organizers
Comprehension
strategies
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Mnemonic
strategies
Note-taking
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Time management
Materials
organization
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Self-regulation
strategies
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Although
effective study skills strategies are critical for academic success, for many
reasons students are seldom taught them. Perhaps chief among these reasons is
simply that teachers assume students already possess such skills, having picked
them up in the earlier grades. For this reason, study skills instruction
improves the academic outcomes of all students, especially those with LD and
ADHD
2. CATEGORIZATION OF STUDY SKILLS:
MICRO OR PRIMARY STUDIES SKILL
The study skill which are imparted to students up to
matriculation level or known as micro or primary study skill they can further
be divided into two stages.
1: Controlled stage:
It is the stage at which a child acquires the basic study skills under the
control of his teacher or instructor. This stage is normally until primary
level.
2: Guided Stage: It
is the stage where a child guided in acquiring the basic study skills. This
stage is after the primary level up to matriculation.
MACRO OR ADVANCED STUDY SKILLS
The study skills which a student acquires after the
matriculation level are generally called advanced study skills.
There can be classified as follows:
1: ADVANCE STAGE: The
stage where a student is required to adopt and acquired study skills of higher
level then controlled or guided stage is called advance sage. It normally
includes the intermediate level.
2: INDEPENDENT
STAGE: This is the stage where a student is free to exercise his mind in
acquisition of the skills, and is not controlled, guided or restricted by
graduation and can last as long as one aspires to study.
3. LOCATING INFORMATION AND USE OF REFERENCE BOOKS: By their very
name, reference materials are obviously those items most likely to be useful in
answering reference questions. For this reason, they are often held by
libraries as resources which are either non-circulating or circulated under
strict limitations. In the case of some very useful or popular titles, the
patron is best served when the library can own at least two copies to allow for
a "reference" and a circulating copy. A brief outline of the most
common types of reference materials is presented below.
Almanacs
Contain
specific facts, statistical data, tables of comparative information, and
organized lists of basis reference information related to people, places,
events, etc. Usually cover broad periods of time, whereas Yearbooks will
have the same time of information for a single year.
Example -- World Almanac and Book of Facts
Atlases
Contain
an organized group of physical, political, road, and/or thematic maps. Symbols,
scales, and terms used in the atlas should be explained in an easy to
understand and complete manner.
Example -- Atlas of American History
Bibliographies
Contain
one or more lists of resources and materials sharing some common attribute such
as location, publishing date, subject, etc. A good bibliography should include
all pertinent bibliographical data. Some will include descriptive or critical
annotations.
Example -- Guide to Reference Books for School Media Centers
Biographical
Resources
Contain
information about individual people or locate (index) other works which provide
this type of information. Collected biographies can cover a given subject, a
stated time period, or other special groups of individuals.
Example -- Current Biography Yearbook
Dictionaries
Contain
words of a given language and other information such as their origins,
pronunciations, and definitions. Unabridged dictionaries contain 250,000 words
or more. Special dictionaries include picture dictionaries, foreign language
dictionaries, synonym dictionaries, thesauri, etc.
Example -- Webster's School Dictionary
Directories
Contain
an organized list of people and/or organizations of some type. Other
information such as addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. are
included for each entry.
Example -- Special Collections in Children's Literature
Encyclopedias,
General
Contain
an alphabetically organized listing of a broad range of subjects with basic
information for each entry. General encyclopedias provide a good basis for the
beginning stages of research. They are also helpful resources for ready
reference questions.
Example -- World Book Encyclopedia
Encyclopedias,
Subject
Contain
the same type of information and organized like a general encyclopedia. The
entries are limited to those that fall within the subject encyclopedia's scope
of the coverage.
Example -- The Grolier Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
Handbooks
Contain
an abundance of information related to one subject. This is one type of
reference material which needs to be circulating in order to serve the patron
well.
Example -- Famous First Facts
Indexes
Contain
information necessary for locating information in a given specific item or a
type of resource. They help to locate information in periodicals, anthologies,
newspapers, etc. Concordances and quotation dictionaries are specific types of
indexes.
Example -- National Geographic Index
5.
STORING INFORMATION:
For
information (including the higher quality information we call knowledge)
to be of any use for future generations to enjoy or perhaps be weary of, it
must be stored on some kind of physical media. In the modern technological
world, information is stored in a variety of ways, the most common of which
are:
·
The
human brain
·
Paper
·
Floppy
disk
·
CD-ROM
·
The
Internet.
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STORAGE MEDIUM
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ADVANTAGES
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DISADVANTAGES
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HUMAN BRAIN
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Information
can be recalled almost immediately.
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The
brain has a habit of selecting information it wants due to the presence of
other information in memory called beliefs
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It
often takes a simple "memory key" to unlock a wealth of information
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Effort
must be made to make the information interesting as possible for effective
memory and recall.
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Information
in the brain can be put into action fairly quickly
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Information
stored in the brain can change over time due to our creative side of the
brain constantly adapting and searching for solutions.
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PAPER
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No
special tools are required to read information on paper other than using
one's eyes and brain to observe and decode the information.
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Audio
and moving pictures cannot be stored on paper unless the imagination of the
human brain can bring the work to life.
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Information
is easily accessible
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Costly
to produce in great quantities given the limited supply of the raw materials
to create paper.
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Information
can be preserved on paper for a long time (about 100 years).
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Updating
information on paper is usually a laborious and expensive process. It can
take nearly 12 months to update, print and distribute information on paper to
the global market.
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FLOPPY DISK
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Relatively
cheap to buy in bulk.
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Requires
additional tools (i.e. a computer, floppy drive and software) to read
information on a floppy disk
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Convenient
size for carrying around by hand and in holding a reasonable amount of
information
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Insufficient
storage capacity for large books and multimedia applications containing
high-quality movies and sounds.
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Easy
to read, write and update with the help of a machine called a computer.
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Information
on a floppy disk is susceptible to damage from outside magnetic fluctuations
(e.g. a power cable).
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CD-ROM
|
For
a slightly higher cost, a CD-ROM can store about 440 floppy disks (or between
650MB and 700MB) worth of information, making it suitable for multimedia applications
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Requires
additional tools (i.e. a computer, CD drive and software) to read information
on a CD-ROM.
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Normal
everyday magnetic fluctuations will not affect the media or the information
stored on CD-ROM.
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Only
the most intense magnetic fluctuations in certain laboratories could cause
the reflective media (if made of aluminium) to heat up and melt.
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Information
can be accessed with great speed.
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The
construction of early CD-ROMs had poor quality plastics that can chemically
react with the reflective (aluminium) media, and thereby reducing its
lifespan for storing information. Nowadays, the plastics have been improved
with built-in chemical dyes to prevent this problem. However, the plastics
still have one other problem: they are too soft and can scratch easily and
this can affect the quality of the information getting through the plastic
when it is read by a laser disc player.
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If
high quality materials and special dyes are used, CD-ROMs can last for 200
years or more.
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THE INTERNET
|
Information
can reach an extremely wide audience quickly and easily with minimal cost.
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The
content and presentation of many Internet sites is often of a low quality.
|
|
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The
number of computers connected to the Internet is already a massive storehouse
of information, far greater than can be stored on a single CD-ROM or book.
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It
can be difficult to find specific information you want quickly and easily.
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Information
on the Internet can be modified in a matter of minutes at little or no cost,
allowing people to access the very latest information.
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Additional
tools are required to access the Internet (i.e. a computer, a modem, a
telephone network and software).
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The
type of media used to store information on the Internet is not important.
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Accessing
multimedia-rich information on the Internet tends to be slow due to limited
bandwidth in the network.
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6. RETRIVIEVING AND INTERPRETING INFORMATION:
Recall or retrieval of memory refers to the subsequent
re-accessing of events or information from the past, which have been previously
encoded and stored in the brain. In common parlance, it is known as
remembering. During recall, the brain "replays" a pattern of neural
activity that was originally generated in response to a particular event,
echoing the brain's perception of the real event. In fact, there is no real
solid distinction between the act of remembering and the act of thinking.
There are
two main methods of accessing memory: recognition and recall.
Recognition is the association of an event or physical object
with one previously experienced or encountered, and involves a process of
comparison of information with memory, e.g. recognizing a known face,
true/false or multiple choice questions, etc. Recognition is a largely
unconscious process, and the brain even has a dedicated face-recognition area,
which passes information directly through the limbic areas to generate a sense
of familiarity, before linking up with the cortical path, where data about the
person's movements and intentions are processed. Recall involves remembering a
fact, event or object that is not currently physically present (in the sense of
retrieving a representation, mental image or concept), and requires the direct
uncovering of information from memory, e.g. remembering the name of a
recognized person, fill-in the blank questions, etc.
Recognition is usually considered to
be “superior” to recall (in the sense of being more effective), in that it
requires just a single process rather than two processes. Recognition requires
only a simple familiarity decision, whereas a full recall of an item from
memory requires a two-stage process (indeed, this is often referred to as the
two-stage theory of memory) in which the search and retrieval of candidate
items from memory is followed by a familiarity decision where the correct
information is chosen from the candidates retrieved.
Interpretation is the act of explaining, reframing, or
otherwise showing your own understanding of something. A person who translates
one language into another is called an interpreter because they are explaining
what a person is saying to someone who doesn't understand. Interpretation
requires you to first understand the piece of music, text, language, or idea,
and then give your explanation of it. A computer may produce masses of data, but
it will require your interpretation of the data for people to understand it.
Basic analysis of
"qualitative" information
(respondents' verbal answers in interviews,
focus groups, or written commentary on questionnaires):
- Read through all the data.
- Organize comments into similar
categories, e.g., concerns, suggestions, strengths, weaknesses, similar
experiences, program inputs, recommendations, outputs, outcome indicators,
etc.
- Label the categories or themes,
e.g., concerns, suggestions, etc.
- Attempt to identify patterns, or
associations and causal relationships in the themes, e.g., all people who
attended programs in the evening had similar concerns, most people came
from the same geographic area, most people were in the same salary range,
what processes or events respondents experience during the program, etc.
- Keep all commentary for several
years after completion in case needed for future reference.
Interpreting information
- Attempt to put the information in
perspective, e.g., compare results to what you expected, promised results;
management or program staff; any common standards for your products or
services; original goals (especially if you're conducting a program
evaluation); indications or measures of accomplishing outcomes or results
(especially if you're conducting an outcomes or performance evaluation);
description of the program's experiences, strengths, weaknesses, etc.
(especially if you're conducting a process evaluation).
- Consider recommendations to help
employees improve the program, product or service; conclusions about
program operations or meeting goals, etc.
- Record
conclusions and recommendations in a report, and associate interpretations
to justify your conclusions or recommendations.
