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Study Skills

A survey of college freshmen found only 16% had very good study habits. Students often base their judgments more on what they generally know than on what they specifically remember. Reducing distractions can help students improve their study habits and time management.

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191 views

Study Skills

A survey of college freshmen found only 16% had very good study habits. Students often base their judgments more on what they generally know than on what they specifically remember. Reducing distractions can help students improve their study habits and time management.

Uploaded by

api-31355470
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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H.

Application: Study Skills


In a survey of college freshmen, only 16% reported they had very good study habits and only 24% said they were very good at managing their time (HRSDC, 2007). Well discuss ways you can improve your study habits and time management to help you be a successful college student. Common complaint. The most common student complaint we hear after exams is, I read the book and went over my notes three times and still got a C. This comHow do I know plaint points to the most common when Ive studied mistake students make in studying enough to take for exams. Because students read the a test? material and go over their notes several times, they may have a general feeling they know the material. For example, you have just read about the modern approaches, the historical approaches, and the differences between a psychologist and psychiatrist. Having read this material, you may generally feel that you know it. However, researchers have discovered a startling fact: There is almost no relationship between how well students think they know material and how well they perform on an exam (Eva et al., 2004; Tousignant & DesMarchais, 2002). Poor judges. The reason students tend to be poor judges of what they know is that they base their judgments more on what they generally know than on what they specifically remember (Glenberg et al., 1987). For example, you might generally remember the modern approaches. However, on an exam you will be asked for specific information, such as names and definitions. One way to What study problems do most freshmen report?

Improving Study Habits

judge how prepared you are for an exam is to test yourself and get feedback from answering specific questions. For instance, can you list the modern approaches and define each one? Because answering specific questions is one way to judge your learning, we built specific questions and answers into this text. You can test yourself by answering questions in the Concept Review in each module and in the Summary Test at the end of each module. Reducing distractions. When we ask students about their study habits, we often learn they listen to music, watch TV, answer phone calls, or use the Internet while studying. These study habits can lead to lower exam scores (Gurung, 2005). One way students can improve their study habits is by eliminating distractions. Time management. A common problem students have is managing their time. As a result, students often fall behind in classes and then must cram for exams. Intense studying before an exam may help you pass, but your time could be much better spent. Did you know that spreading out your studying can help you better remember information? In fact, dividing your studying into two sessions with time between them has been shown to result in twice as much learning as one study session of the same length! This is because your brain remembers information longer if it has time to process what youve learned (Aamodt & Wang, 2008). Next, well discuss another useful way to better manage your time. Remember:

To judge how well prepared you are for an exam, ask yourself specic questions about the material. You can do that by taking the tests built into each moduleConcept Review and Summary Test.

Setting Goals
Another way to better manage your study time is to set the right goals, which can vary from studying for a certain period of time to studying until you feel you are well prepared (Flippo & Caverly, 2000, 2009). Which of the following goals do you think would make your study time more efficient and improve your test performance? Whats the best kind of goal to set? To determine which of these three goals leads to more effective studying, researchers told three different groups of students to set time goals, general goals, or specific performance goals when they studied on their own. The researchers found that students who set specific performance goals did significantly better on the final exam than students who set time or general goals (M. Morgan, 1985). Thus, if you want to improve your study skills, you should think less about the total time you study and concentrate more on reaching a specific performance goal every week. For example, the first week your goal might be to correctly answer 80% of the Summary Test questions. Once you have reached this goal, you could aim to answer 90% of the questions correctly. Following a study plan based on specific performance goals is the key to better time management (Wolters, 2003). As youll see next, one way to motivate yourself to reach your performance goals is to reward yourself at the right times. Remember:

1 Set a time goal, such as studying 10 hours a 2


Set a general goal, such as trying to study hard and stay on schedule; then, try to reach this goal during the semester. goal, such as answering at least 80% of the Summary Test questions correctly for each module.

3 Set a specic performance

one way to make your study time more efcient is to set a specic performance goal and keep track of your progress.

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MoDule 1 discovering Psychology

Photo Credit: Hangarter/Photolibrary

week or more, and then keep track of your study time during the semester.

Should my goal be to study 10 hours a week?

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