How to Study Effectively: Part I

By: SEAN YANG

Staff Writer

Probably the most common activity all students do is studying: the boring process of learning via research, practice, and reading. Perhaps you skim through a textbook, looking for definitions and important phrases in preparation for a quiz. Maybe you go through your notes, highlighting concepts and further refining your understanding of them. Whatever your method of studying is, it’s a certainty that, at some point, you must participate in this activity in order to score high on tests and keep up with your class. However, there is a clear hierarchy to the methods and techniques that students use—learning what these superior study techniques are and applying them to your routine will do nothing but benefit you in your journey of becoming a better student. In this article, we will discuss studying methods, note-taking strategies, and organizational tools to create an optimal studying environment to best fit your needs.

If you are someone who likes to reread passages until it somehow makes sense to you, you may want to reconsider the way you try to absorb the information. Rereading is a passive learning skill—it requires no effort of your own to simply read or watch and try to internalize the material as you go along. In focused studying, where you are actively trying to understand the material, passive learning is ineffective and inefficient. You simply do not learn or retain as much information by reviewing paragraphs and notes over and over again compared to other study methods. We must apply deliberate action in order for our brain to retain and recall detailed information as much as possible—active learning. How do we make this conscious effort to learn and understand topics as we read? Probably the best method for reading comprehension is SQ3R, which is often most effective in textbook reading:

  • Survey: Briefly skim over each chapter (or an equivalent) and its contents to gain a rough understanding of the subject matter.
  • Question: Turn each section or heading (or an equivalent) into detailed questions to answer before fully reading the text.
  • Read: Concentrate on reading each section (or an equivalent) and answer your previously posed questions—filling in unknown information.
  • Recite: Instead of simply re-reading the text, stop after each section and try to answer your questions from memory in order to practice recall. If you fail, read the section again as often as needed to fully answer your questions before moving on. This is where the difference between simple re-reading and actively reciting information shows itself.
  • Review: After reading the chapter (or an equivalent), try to recall the answers to every question you posed. If you fail, go back to refresh your memory before moving on.

This method of surveying the contents, giving yourself questions to answer as you read, recalling the answers to those questions, and reviewing the whole chapter by recalling each answer to every question is a far superior method to re-reading alone. In any subject where lots of reading is required or a textbook is needed—such as psychology—SQ3R is, by far, the best way to improve your reading comprehension and understanding of concepts. All it takes is to add conscious effort to something you already do—reading!

What if we aren’t reading from a textbook, but we still need to memorize formulas and techniques in abstract subjects, like in math? You cannot get much better than simply practicing the material and solving many problems until you demonstrate mastery and a good understanding of the relevant concepts. Learn where and how formulas are used and needed and make sure to build upon your fundamentals. Whenever you fail to solve a problem, seek advice from someone who is able to, and compare their process step-by-step with yours to find your shortcomings. Even English is another great example—writing techniques, vocabulary expansion, and increasing your level of literacy can all be done by practicing new techniques, using new words often, and reading as much as possible. Though it is often in your best interest to only compare yourself to your past self, it is a good idea to analyze the writings and interpretations of your peers and see how they thought out their structures, vocabulary, ideas, and arguments and find what you can take away from their writing. Self-analysis and having someone else review your work is also a great way to gain feedback.

For those who reading from the textbook is a must or you’re struggling to keep up in math, hopefully, this article will help you succeed in those subjects. If there is any weak point to SQ3R and deliberate practice (and other studying methods that will be discussed next week!) it is that you need to be highly motivated to improve, learn, and understand the content you are studying. As students, we do ourselves a disservice by not studying effectively because we waste more time learning information superficially just to forget it after a required quiz or test. Instead of having to relearn old concepts and struggle to understand new ones, using these methods and putting conscious, purposeful effort into our studying will help us learn more deeply and efficiently about our subjects, thus only requiring nothing more than a refresher or review and keeping important details in long-term memory.

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