If studying effi ciently is second nature to you, you’re very lucky. Most people have to work at it. Try some of these helpful study methods to make studying easier and more effective for you.
Make an Outline
After collecting all the materials you need to review or prepare for the test, the fi rst step for studying any sub-ject is to reduce a large body of information into smaller, more manageable units. One approach to studying this way is to make an outline of text infor-mation, handout material, and class notes.
The important information in print material is often surrounded by lots of extra words and ideas. If you can highlight just the important information, or at least the information you need to know for your test, you can help yourself narrow your focus so that you can study more effectively. There are several ways to make an outline of print material. They include annotating, outlining, and mapping. The point of all three of these strategies is that they allow you to pull out just the important information that you need to prepare for the test.
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Annotating
Annotations help you pull out main ideas from the surrounding text to make them more visible and acces-sible to you. Annotation means that you underline or highlight important information that appears in print material. It also involves responding to the material by engaging yourself with the writer by making margin notes. Margin notes are phrases or sentences in the
margins of print material that summarize the content of those passages. Your margin notes leave footprints for you to follow as you review the text.
Here is an example of a passage that has been annotated and underlined.
Different quiet
places at different
times
Need good light Portable
study material
Library!
Loction, Location, Location
Find a quiet spot, use a good reading light, and turn the radio off.
Find Quiet Places
For many adult test takers, it’s diffi cult to fi nd a quiet spot in their busy lives. Many adults don’t even have a bedroom corner that isn’t shared with someone else. Your quiet spot may be in a different place at different times of the day.
For example, it could be the kitchen table early in the morning before break-fast, your workplace area when everyone else is at lunch, or a corner of the sofa late at night. If you know you’ll have to move around when you study, make sure your study material is portable.
Keep your notes, practice tests, pencils, and other supplies together in a folder or bag. Then you can easily carry your study material with you and study in whatever quiet spot presents itself.
If quiet study areas are nonexistent in your home or work environment, you may need to fi nd a space elsewhere. The public library is the most obvious choice.
Some test takers fi nd it helpful to assign themselves study hours at the library in the same way that they schedule dentist appointments, class hours, household tasks, or other necessary uses of daily or weekly time. Studying away from home or work also minimizes the distractions of other people and other demands when you are preparing for a test.
Lights
Libraries also provide good reading lights. For some people, this may seem like a trivial matter, but the eyestrain that can come from working for long periods in poor light can be very tiring—which you can’t afford when you’re studying hard.
At home, the bedside lamp, the semidarkness of a room dominated by the television, or the bright sunlight of the back porch will be of little help to tired eyes.
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Outlining
You are probably familiar with the basic format of the traditional outline:
You may have used an outline in school to help you organize a writing assignment or take notes. When you outline print material, you’re looking for the basic ideas that make up the framework of the text. When you are taking out the important information for a test, then you are looking for the basic ideas that the author wants to convey to you.
Mapping
Mapping is a more visual kind of outline. Instead of making a linear outline of the main ideas of a text, when you map, you make a diagram of the main points in the text that you want to remember. The following diagrams show the same information in a map form.
Make Study Notes
The next step after you have pulled out all the key ideas is to make notes from which you will study. You will use these notes for the intensive and ongoing study you’ll do over the period of time before the test. They’re the specifi c items that you targeted as important to know for the test. Your notes should help you under-stand the information you need to know and, in many cases, commit it to memory. You should be sure to include
■ the main ideas you underlined or highlighted in the text.
■ the main ideas and important details you outlined or mapped from the text.
■ specifi c terms, words, dates, formulas, names, facts, or procedures that you need to memorize.
How Do You Make Study Notes?
Some people like to write study notes in the back pages of their notebooks or on paper folded lengthwise so that it can be tucked between the pages of a text or review book. This format is good to use for notes that can be written as questions and answers, cause and effect, or defi nition and examples. You can also make notes on index cards.
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Using Index Cards
It can be very helpful to write your study notes—
especially those that contain material to be memorized—on index cards. Vocabulary words are signifi cantly easier to learn using index cards.
Advantages of making notes on index cards are:
■ The information on each card is visually sep-arated from other information. Therefore, it’s easier to concentrate on just that one item, separate from the surrounding text.
You remember the look of a vocabulary word or a math equation more clearly when it is set off by itself.
■ Cards are small and portable. They can be carried in a purse or a pocket and pulled out at any time during the day for review.
■ Study cards can help you with the necessary task of memorizing. If you write the key word or topic you are trying to learn on one side, and the information you must know on the other side, you have an easy way to quiz yourself on the material. This method is especially good for kinesthetic learners, who learn by doing.