How to Take on College Studying
Your Cramming Days Are Over
In college, you may be shocked by the workload you suddenly face. Read a whole book for the next class? A test on three chapters when the semester has hardly begun?
Think of college as a full-time job, in which you spend about 40 hours a week on class, labs, section meetings, and study groups, and doing homework. And you're largely responsible for deciding exactly how much time to
allocate to each task. Getting organized and using your time well are key to succeeding academically.
Decide Where and When to Study
Come up with a specific plan for where and what you'll study during any gaps in your schedule. In addition to making use of transitional times during the day, it's generally a good idea to avoid studying too late at night, when you tend to be tired, work inefficiently, and forget much of the material you cover. The best places to study have the following qualities:
Good light
Comfortable temperature Good desk space
Beyond that, different environments have their own pros and cons. Ultimately, the decision of where to study depends on two factors: the environment in which you are best able to concentrate and the type of work you are planning to do. For completing problem sets or brainstorming possible test questions, you may want to study with a group or at least in a setting where others in the class are available for discussion. When you are reading Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil or working on a
research paper, by contrast, you are probably better off in a less social environment.
Develop Good Study Habits Early On
Here are some simple tips to help you improve your study habits: Have a routine for where and when you study.
Decide in advance what you'll study, choosing reasonable and specific goals that you can accomplish.
Do things that are harder or require more intense thought earlier in the day. Take breaks so that you stay fresh and don't waste time looking at material but not absorbing it.
Make use of "dead" time right before and after class and in breaks between other activities.
Keep up with the workload and seek help at the time you need it. You don't want to become paralyzed by stress or get so far behind in the work that it is too late to begin studying the material you've skipped.
Do the Reading
There's a big difference between reading effectively and merely skimming the text without thinking about your relationship to the material. To read more effectively:
Read assigned materials before class so that you'll be able to ask questions about and have a context for understanding them.
Take notes on the reading instead of highlighting the text. It's a more active form of learning, because it requires you to think through and rephrase the key points. Later, you can highlight the important ideas from your notes on the reading and your class notes. Having written notes apart from the text will also be a great help when it comes time to review the material for tests.
HOW TO READ A COLLEGE TEXTBOOK
Whenever I ask my students how they read a chapter in their textbook, they usually give me that expression which politely says, "What are you talking about?" Behind that expression are two truths: (1) Most students read their textbook chapters starting on the first page and just continue on to the last page, and (2) rarely have they been taught any differently. Too bad. Reading a chapter from
beginning to end is the least efficient, least effective way possible.
A textbook should be read differently than any other type of book.
Most students are passive readers. To get the most out of a chapter, students need to become active readers. Ask yourself this: what’s the most effective way to learn to change a flat tire, reading the owner’s manual or actually changing a flat tire? Believe me, you learn fast when you actually need to change a flat tire. Why is that? Because you involve several of your senses (sight, sound, muscle action—and quite likely speaking). In this situation, actually the most effective way is to read the owner’s manual first, and then to change the tire. The more of our senses we involve in anything, the more effective is our
learning.
payoff is in how much more you learn and especially how much more you remember. Another payoff is that when you need to review the chapter again for a test, reviewing will take a lot less time—when you need extra time. Have you ever turned a page and thought, "What did I just read?" That unhappy feeling doesn't happen to active readers.
Previewing the Chapter
Why check out a chapter before you begin reading? If you need to drive somewhere but don’t know how to get to your destination,
wouldn’t you first get directions or check out a road map? Previewing your route is an effective way of getting to your destination efficiently. Similarly, previewing a chapter gives you an idea of what the chapter is about and what its organization is.
There are generally three ways to preview, depending on how your textbook is laid out.
(1) If your textbook has a summary at the end of a chapter, read the summary first.
(2) If your textbook doesn’t have a summary but does have
subheadings in bold or italicized print, go through the chapter reading the subheadings.
(3) If the chapter has neither a summary nor subheadings, the
procedure is a little more complicated. First, read the first paragraph or two until you come to the thesis statement—the sentence that tells what the chapter will be about. Underline this thesis statement. Then read the very last paragraph or two, where you will find the author’s conclusion. Underline the conclusion. Then compare the two
underlined sentences, and you will have the main idea of the chapter. Now go back and underline the first sentence of each paragraph in the chapter. Usually these sentences will be the paragraphs’ topic sentences. Reading just these underlined topic sentences will provide the reader with an outline of the whole chapter.
The good news is that most textbooks do have summaries, so the first method listed above will be the most common one that you use.
Seeing the "whole picture" before you begin reading will help
tremendously in your understanding of how parts of a chapter fit into the whole.
Educators from Socrates to those of us in the classroom presently, acknowledge the power of asking questions. You too can use the power of questioning in reading your textbooks.
The most useful aid in becoming an active, questioning reader are subheadings which are in bold print or italicized. Every time you come to one of them, pause and turn that subheading into a question. (For your questions, use the five "W’s" and one "H"--what, where, when, why, who, and how.) So, for instance,
The Battle of Gettysburg becomes
"Why was the Battle of Gettysburg important?"
The dangers of saturated fat becomes
"What are the dangers of saturated fats?"
George Spelvin becomes
"Who was George Spelvin?" or "What did George Spelvin do?" or any other question.
The big reason for doing this is that we remember more of what we read if we read to answer a question. Surprisingly, even if the
textbook paragraph doesn’t answer the question we’ve made up, the learning effectiveness is still there.
One more thing: When you’ve turned a subheading into a question, say the question out loud to yourself. (Remember, the more of your senses you can get involved, the more effective is the learning.)
(Note: Some textbooks have study questions at the beginning or end of a chapter. Usually those questions are in the same order as the chapter’s material. If your chapter has a list of study questions, read the first study question out loud to yourself, then read the chapter until the question is answered. Then come back to the list of
questions, read the next one…and so on, until you’ve finished reading the chapter.)
Reading
Are you accustomed to not writing in your textbooks? If so, forget it. Active readers write in their textbooks a lot.
Read at a rate that pushes you a bit. If running your finger under and a bit ahead of what your reading helps, do that—it’s a well-known technique for speed reading.
Did you read what you think is a key point? Put an exclamation mark in the margin (or any other mark which will identify key points for you).
Was there something that was unclear or something to which you’ll want to come back to study further? Put a question mark in the margin.
Write notes in the margins.
Underline or highlight what you think are key points. (Don’t go wild with underlining or highlighting, though; it then becomes
meaningless.)
Circle words which you had to look up in a dictionary. Textbook reading should be an active process.
When you have completed reading the paragraphs after each
subheading, try to state in your own words a summary of what you just read. Say it out loud—even whispering is good if you’re in a quiet study area in a library. This is a critical step in learning from reading, and it does two things.
It helps to fix the material in your mind, and
If you can’t summarize what you just read, it’s a sure sign that you haven’t learned it, and that you should read it again.
It’s easy for you to kid yourself that you have learned the material just because you’ve read it. Easy, but wrong. You cannot remember what you don’t understand, and you can’t do effective reading further on if you don’t comprehend what you just read.
Reading, speaking, and writing, used together, use the fundamental principle that the more of your senses that are involved, the more effective the learning. Textbook reading should be an active process.
Later. . .
When exam time comes, you will need to go back and re-read the chapters which will be covered on the exam. No one needs to tell you that this is pressure time.
If you have been an active reader as suggested above, then when the time comes to study for a test, you will be able to review the
loud earlier. Review thus becomes an efficient process, more than making up for the little bit of additional time it took to read the chapter as an active reader the first time through.
As stated earlier, most students have simply fallen into the bad habit of just reading a chapter from beginning to end because they haven’t been taught any differently. What’s the key word in that statement? Habit. One of the best ways of changing a bad habit is to replace it with a good habit. Usually that’s what is happening when you become an active reader, using the techniques and knowledge you have just read.
Textbook reading should be an active process. Become an active reader. You will be glad you did.
Dr. John Weber
Professor of English
