ENGLISH – Improving Study and Thinking Skills

What is Study?

The activity or process of learning about something by reading, memorizing facts, attending school,
etc. (Meriam Webster, 1828)

What are the Study Skills?

1. Study Skills are specific abilities which students may use alone or in combination to learn the
content of the curriculum on their own. (Graham and Robinson, 1984)

2. Study Skills are those that enable a person to gather information and to organize it in such a way that
requires analysis, interpretation and evaluation (Harris and Smith, 1986)

3. Study Skills are skills necessary for acquiring critical information form of variety of texts and media
sources for different purposes and uses. (Klein, Peterson and Simington, 1991)

What are the important in Study Skills?

1. Establishing a mental set (framework) for studying.

2. Adjusting reading rate for different reading tools, reading types and reading purposes.
3. Previewing texts
4. Skimming
5. Note-Taking
6. Outlining
7. Interpreting graphic information (charts, graphs, etc.)
8. Portraying ideas graphically (illustrating, mapping, charting)
9. Summarizing

How Does One Learn to Study well?

In studying, students need to:

1. Recall prior knowledge and previous experience.

2. Organize information while reading
3. Organize information after reading
4. Synthesize and articulate new learning
5. Learn vocabulary that labels important concepts, elements and relationships.
6. Produce or create something new and apply new information.

What are the Methods can be Used for Studying?

PQ3R Study Method is the mnemonic for an effective students regulated approach to studying the kind
of material assigned everyday – textbooks. Gaining new information and ideas from a variety of different
textbooks demands a balance and flexible network of study strategies.

P (Preview) – know where you are going first. Read the introduction. Glance at the pictures, charts and
diagrams. Read the wrap-up of the chapter… – the summary and review questions.
 Q (Question) – Work through the chapter-- one manageable at a time.
- Be a human question mark.
- Go into each section with a question in your mind.
- Turn headings, and sometimes topic sentences into question.
- These should guide you to the main prints.

R1 (Read) – Read to find the answer to your question and other important content. Unknown terms say,
STOP! LOOK UP! LEARN! Remove these roadblocks. Each pictorial aid is saying, “this is clearing up
something important”. Shift into back-and-forth reading for pictures, diagrams, and charts. Shift your eyes
(and thoughts) back and forth as needed from the printed words to the pictorial aid.
– Speed up and slow down as needed within the passage. Do-and-stop reading.

R2 (Record) – Jot down or mark important ideas. Make the key ideas stand out in some way so they
will “flag” you later. Use any combination of devices. Jot many notes on a memo slip to be inserted between
related pages on in the books margin. Draw vertical lines in the margin just to the left or right of important
content. Bracelet key ideas. Underline or color-accent selectively. Now you won’t have reread the entire
chapter when you return to review it later. Make key ideas “flag” you.

R3 (Recite) – Students exclaim, “I’ve read that chapter twice, but I still can’t remember it.” solve this
problem by using the most powerful techniques known to psychologists – the technique of self recitation. As
you complete a section or paragraph, ask yourself “Just what have I learned here.”

R4 (Review) – Add a last quick run through. Can you recall the broad chapter plan? Run through the
chapter to recall the plan. Next, run through it section by section, checking yourself once more on the main
prints and the important sub-prints. Use your cover card again. Make some quick reviews later on from time to
time. Long term memory does improve grades.

R5 (Reflect) – As you read a passage, turn on your critical thinking. Ask yourself, “What does this all
mean? Is it true? How can I apply it?” reading and reflecting should simultaneously and inseperable – built
right into every step of PQ3R.

How Helpful is Scanning and Skimming in Reading?

Readers use different strategies based on what and why are they reading. To be an efficient reader,
students need to know when to read for full comprehension and when to use other reading methods, such as
scanning and skimming. (Seyler, 2001)

Scanning involves searching materials for a particular piece of information. Instead of reading every
word on a page, readers move eyes quickly, searching for what is needed. You scan when you look up a word
in a dictionary or a phone number in the telephone directory. To be an efficient reader, focus on finding just
what you are looking for.

Guidelines for Scanning:

• understand the organization of the materials
• stay focused on what you are looking for
• use whatever clues are available to speed your searching
• confirm your information
 Skimming is a strategy for getting an overview of the ideas contained in a particular piece of writing.
When you scan, you look for a specific informations; when you skim, you overlook details to learn just the
“gist” main ideas of the work. It is also like scanning, though in two important ways;

1. both reading strategies depend on your understanding of the organization of the work
2. both strategies are alternatives to reading for full comprehension. Neither skimming nor scanning
along with produce success when you are reading to learn, but both can make you more efficient if you use
them appropriately.

When Skimming a Useful Reading Strategy:

1. skim some newspaper and magazine articles
2. skim some research materials
3. skim some supplementary readings
4. skim to locate articles for an assignment
5. skim to preview a work before reading it carefully
6. skim to review a section or chapter after you have read it

Reasons for Skimming

1. as part of preparing to reading
2. as part of reviewing for tests
3. as an alternative to reading for full comprehension, when a general familiarity is appropriately

Guidelines for Skimming:

✔ establish your goal for skimming
✔ identify the type of work and study its organization
✔ skim newspaper articles by reading the first two paragraphs and then moving your eyes quickly down
the center of each column.
✔ skim magazine articles by reading the first one or two paragraphs and then skimming the rest of the
article.

How do Students Improve Reading Efficiency?

Different strategies to read intelligently:

• Strategy 1 “knowing what you want to know”

– The first thing to ask yourself is: Why are you reading the text? Are you reading with a purpose or just for
pleasure? What do you want to know after reading it?”
– Once you know this, you can examine the text to see whether it is going to move you toward this goal.

• Strategy 2 “knowing how deeply to study the material”

– Where you can only need the shallowest knowledge of the subject you can skim material. Here you can
only read chapter headings, introductions, and summaries.

• Strategy 3 “active reading”

– When you are reading a document in detail, it often helps if you highlight, underline or annotate it as you
go on. This emphasizes information on your mind. And helps you to review important prints later.
 – Doing this also helps to keep your mind focused on the material and stops its wandering. This is obviously
only something to do if you own on the document.

Three Important Steps to Active Reading:

✔ identify the author’s name
✔ identify the paragraph topics
✔ note the supporting details

What is Main Idea?

– The subject or major argument of a speech or composition
– The theme, or the concise statements of the main point
– Involves reducing text to its gist

How Does a Reader Grasp the Main Idea of a Solution?

1. Determine the topic of the text. Use the title to predict the topic.
2. Ask yourself, “What about the topic was discussed?” to point out the focus of the topic.
3. Review the title to hypothesize about the writer’s pattern of text organization.
Read the entire selection to confirm if the main idea you have predicted matches writer’s main idea. If there’s
a match, the purpose of your reading is to look for the support ideas. Jot down all the important notes that
relate to the main idea.
4. Evaluate the notes you have written, and synthesize the ideas you gathered from steps 1-4to summarize the
informational text in 2 or 3 sentences.

• Strategy 4 “how to study different sorts of materials”

– Different sorts of documents hold information in different places and in different ways. They have
different depths and breadths of coverage. By understanding the layout of the material you are reading, you
can extract useful information much more efficiently.

Thinking Skills?
– Are the complex set of mental processes we utilize to process input and attempt to understand it. These
processes takes us through six broad categories or levels of thinking: knowledge, comprehension, application,
analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

What are the Sub-Skills of Thinking Skills?

1. Understanding Information: recalling, summarizing, symbolizing, role-taking, and categorizing.

2. Manipulating Information: analyzing information, applying information, inducing (ie. inferring) and
deducing, and problem solving.
3. Generating Information: brainstorming, synthesizing, predicting, questioning and evaluating.

➢ When we consider these 3 categories and their sub-skills, we can see evolution and advancement in
complexity.

What are Thinking Skills?

– Are mental cognitive and strategic processes that we use to solve problems, make different decisions,
asking questions, making plans, organizing and creating information.
How are Thinking Skills Important in Education?
Enable all of us to process information, recall facts and apply knowledge to various situations. At a
higher level, this can involve problem-solving and analysis, which are both useful in education.

What is Cognitive Learning?

Involves vital strategies used in teaching, such as the use of repetition, imagery, organization of facts,
summarizing meaning, and contextualization to help us learn.

* examples of these include mind maps, visualization, mnemonics and underlining significant words or
phrases when note-taking or revising.

Different Types of Thinking Skills:

• Analytical – methodical and structure-focused, analytical thinkers tend to examine individual parts of a
problem before tackling the whole.
• Creative – approaching a problem from a different angle, creative thinkers tend to follow an
unconventional process that involves asking a lot of questions.
• Critical – critical thinkers favor a careful, detailed and open-minded evaluation of a whole problem.

What is Metacognition?
involves developing an awareness of your own thought process and learning strategies.
It involves using your own initiative to plan how to approach learning about something new, as well as
being able to monitor your own understanding.
It is also a vital part of strategizing and problem-solving.

Problem-Solving is a mental process used to assess an issue and identify potential solutions to it. Typically,
when you’re solving a problem you have a desired outcome in mind, but you’re also faced with a challenge
that could prevent that outcome being achieved.
Therefore, you use problem-solving to find a solution to the challenge and to ensure that you get the
outcome you want. Problem-solving is a complex, analytical process and often requires you to make use of
other skills, like decision-making.

Decision-Making is about making choices. When you’re making-decision, you’ll be in a situation where you
have multiple options to choose from that situation.

* the difference between problem-solving and decision-making is that Problem Solving focuses on finding the
most appropriate solution. While Decision Making focuses on deciding between multiple options.

How can We Develop Thinking Skills?

A good way to develop thinking skills and metacognition is to focus on one area, such as problem-
solving or decision-making, depending on the subject/scenario.

Examples:
* If children are working on creative writing, focus on decision-making.
* If children are reading, get them to practice theorizing and predicting that will happen in the narrative, or ask
them to evaluate decisions made by certain characters.
* Math lessons provide a great opportunity for children to practice problem-solving.
Critical Thinking
Is the ability for children and adults to analyze facts and establish a judgment based on logic and
reason. It is essential for children to develop this skill as they move through school, to better their social
interactions, discuss topics more deeply and to be able to work with points of view that may differ from their
own.
Encompasses many of the skills that include inventing, making analogies, formulating hypotheses and
recommending alternatives.
It help the children to filter the information they take in and select which pieces are most relevant to the
task in hand.

Ways that can Promote Skills:

1. Encourage Agreement and Disagreement

A sign of children thinking critically is whether they are able to agree or disagree with something. For
example, you can encourage the children to give reasons or examples as to hy they agree or disagree with the
topic. Pushing children to expand their answer will help them think through their point of view more deeply.

Example: “Are you agree to the same sex marriage?”

2. Asking why
though children are able to provide reasons for their answers, they often don’t; instead, they making
unsupported assertions. You can help them to develop their answers by asking “Why”. Don’t take first answer
as complete.
For example, your child tells you that their classmate Sam snatched a pen from someone else at playtime. He
say “I think he should give it back.” you can encourage them to explain why. Asking, “Why do you think
he should give it back?” this may then prompt him to say “Because it’s not his.”

3. Question Sequentially – help your child work through their reasoning by going through a series of steps.
- Check for general principles (always/never/sometimes)
- Listen out for counter-examples
- Then test the concrete examples

4. Look for Clubs and Hobbies – Joining a philosophy and debating club is a good ay to develop your child’s
critical thinking skills and put them in to practice with other children of a similar age. Some schools run these
clubs, one those may be out-of-school clubs in your area.

Top Critical Thinking Skills

1. Analysis – To analyze something is to carefully examine it, understand it, and then pass on information
about it to someone else. We can analyze anything through people, objects, problems, texts, or something else.

Practical Applications of Analysis

1. Asking questions 4. Questioning evidence that you’ve been presented with
2. Researching topics 5. Recognize pattern in data
3. Interpreting a textbooks
2. Communication – It is important skill for everyone, as it will benefit all areas of our lives. This skill will
also serve us through out every stage of our life and career. For kids, being able to effectively communicate
their ideas.

Practical Applications of Communication

1. Active listening with involves giving someone your full attention, understanding what they mean, and
reflecting on and responding to what’s been said.
2. Collaborating with others
3. Clearly and effectively explaining things
4. Interpersonal skills
5. Presenting information in a way that’s clear and easy to understand.
6. Having good verbal and written communication

3. Creativity – Thinking creatively does not have to involve making up songs or drawing pictures, it can just
be thinking outside the x and spotting patterns where others may not.

Practical Application of Creative Thinking

1. Flexibility in terms of thinking.
2. Coming up with new, outside of the box ideas.
3. Being curious and also seeking new information.
4. Always looking for new ways to do things.
5. Imagination
6. Predicting patterns and trends

4. Open-Mindedness – In order to be effective in thinking critically, you have to be open-minded means

putting any preconceived ideas or judgment that you may have about a subject, person and etc. and look
objectively at the information you’ve been presented with. Ths way you will be able to analyze the
information without any bias swaying the outcome.

Practical Application of Open-mindedness

1. Being fair
2. Exercising humility
3. Encouraging diversity
4. Being inclusive
5. Looking at things objectively
6. Being observant of your surroundings and reflecting on what you see.

5. Problem-Solving – This skill begin with effectively analyzing a problem. Once you have performed an
initial analysis of the problem, you must use problem-solving skills to come up with a solution and put it into
practice. The last step in effective problem-solving is to step back and assess how effective your solution was.

Practical Application of Problem-Solving

1. Paying close attention to detailed
2. Being able to make decisions quickly and with assurance.
3. Evaluating problems.
4. Identifying patterns between issues.
5. Being innovative with new solutions.

Prepared by: Aimah N. Mipanga, LPT