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Developing good study habits among students

InpaperMagzine
November 7, 2010 Daily Dawn

By Prof Dr Hafiz Muhammad Iqbal In todays world of exponential growth of knowledge, the issue of quality education and students learning has become a topic of debate. This discussion has resulted in two fundamental changes in the educational enterprise; change in the philosophy of education and change in pedagogical approaches. Knowledge in the past was considered a body of information to be transmitted to students and the job of the teacher was simple: to present this information to the students in an organised fashion. This view of knowledge has now been profoundly changed. The students are no longer required to memorise piece meal facts and isolated bits of information. They, in almost all disciplines, are required to demonstrate high intellectual abilities to develop proper understanding of the subject matter and be able to apply this knowledge in real life situations. It is believed that students have to play a much greater and active role in the acquisition of knowledge and in the development of their cognitive abilities. Since the last few decades, a new pedagogical approach, constructivism has become wellestablished in the educational institution in many parts of the world. Constructivism means that students should play an active role in their learning and they should be provided with an opportunity to construct their own knowledge and meaning, instead of cramming factual information. One of the requirements of constructivism is that the students should adopt desired, effective and efficient study habits so that they learn independently at their own pace and as per their needs. Even if the teachers do not believe in constructivism and do not teach accordingly, the students have to work hard to achieve good marks in examinations because of high competition for admission in higher education institution and in the disciplines of their own choice. Education is one of those fields, which are continuously facing decline for the past many years. The importance of adopting effective study habits by students in the whole process of learning has always been ignored. Although, teachers and parents do desire that students invest time in studies and show good progress, they are hardly made aware of the requirements of higher education in terms of their role to carry out self-study. Secondly, they are not given any orientation toward effective study skills. This process must start at an early level of education because habits like attitudes are not developed over night. The purpose of this article is to enlist a few effective study habits and skills and ways that the students can adopt to succeed in their academic life. Listening carefully to lectures; asking questions; taking notes; revising, organising and rewriting lecture notes; discussing with others; thinking around new ideas and concepts; reflecting on what the subject means; thinking about practical applications; and reformulating putting something into ones own words are some of the important skills that the students must develop. Reading and writing assignments are an integral part of good study habits. But the most important thing is to listen carefully to the lectures and taking notes effectively. But, paying attention, particularly to lengthy lectures sometimes becomes next to impossible, for many students. All of us have experienced how hard it is to concentrate on a lecture, particularly when it is less interesting or difficult to understand. However, the learning starts at this point. Those who are unable to pay attention to what the teacher is saying will have a hard time later in grasping the content and concept of the lesson. If they know what attention means and the different variables in its way, they can succeed in focusing on their target. Many teachers and students have witnessed that paying attention to lectures becomes difficult when the class is disturbed by some tardy students entering late and exactly at the time when the business of teaching is at its peak. Everybodys attention then turns to the latecomer. Educational psychologists and neuroscientists have made a good deal of effort to study what attention is and how it works. As famous psychologist William James put it, Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of several simultaneous possible objects or trains of thoughts. Focalisation, concentration and consciousness are its essence. It implies to withdrawal from something in order to deal effectively with other things.

This description involves several important aspects of attention. First a person has to be able to maintain a reasonable state of alertness and arousal in order to detect changes in a situation, e.g., different attention-diverging events and ideas when a student is listening to a lecture. Campus life is very fascinating and students find various activities apart from studies that keep them busy and distracted from learning. Many students waste a lot of time in wandering, gossiping and spending hours and hours at canteens, at the cost of studies and sleep. Those students who fail to get enough sleep often find themselves many steps behind their fellows. A person has to be able to disengage attention from the current event and stimulus, e.g., stop reading, discussing with fellows or working intently on something to focus instead on new directions given by the teacher. A student has to be able to shift his/her attention to new stimulus, e.g., look at and listen to the teacher. He has to be able to discriminate between the target, i.e., the teacher, and the non target, i.e., the other students in class. Failing to concentrate on the teachers talk is failing on internalising the concept and defying comprehension. Studies have shown that most mature students fail to maintain their focus on the lecture for more than 15 to 20 minutes. The next important element is making notes of the lectures. A majority of the students try to write down each and every word uttered by the teacher. In doing so, they not only miss many important elements of the lecture but also fail to develop the big picture of the topic under discussion. Students do so to avoid further reading and making notes from other relevant material. Unfortunately, teachers, too, do not put an extra demand on them by asking them to read other relevant material. But the students need to understand that they have to take notes for themselves, and not for others to read. In doing so, they can adopt their own method. Instead of writing whole words they can write short forms of the words developed by them. Many good students already know these techniques as there is no fun of writing down each and every word uttered by the teacher. What works is to write down the main ideas, key words and important concepts to be revised and organised later. Doing so, they will be revising what the teacher said in class while also enhancing their ability to retain the information and recall it at the time of need. Similarly, those students who do extra reading and consult other material in addition to their class notes always develop a better understanding and secure good marks in the examination. Effective reading also demands adoption of certain effective techniques. It involves selecting the material to read, using an appropriate technique for the task in hand, keeping in view the purpose of reading. Scanning the study material for some pertinent point like a key word, date, page number or title, e.g., searching for a particular topic in an index is also helpful. Skimming through is similar to scanning in the sense that it involves quick reading, but aims at developing the overall understanding of the topic or text. However, it must be noted that there is a difference between reading for study and light reading. Reading for study and for examination purpose tends to be slower and repetitive. Students need an in-depth reading for developing and understanding the text. Conversely, light reading is used quite often and is employed when reading novels with no real need to digest the material or critically assess it. This type of reading is usually fast and superficial. In certain cases students need to read the text word-by-word. This is used for foreign languages, technical terms or unfamiliar scientific and mathematical formulae. Many books of educational psychology have a detailed description of reading strategy called SQ3R. This is an acronym of five different aspects of reading, that is, survey, question, read, recall and review or revise. Survey means a quick skim read just to give an overview. Question means to establish the purpose of your reading (Why am I reading this? What am I looking for?). Read means a slower thorough reading aimed at understanding the content. Recall is to write down or vocalise the main ideas of the text. And lastly, review or revise means checking the accuracy of your recall with the text. It is the need of the hour that students must be provided opportunities for developing these skills right from the early years of schooling. Many universities have introduced undergraduate classes. It is desirable that at this level courses on strategic learning be introduced to help students learn more effectively in order to improve their performance. A more important element is the system of examination. Assessment and evaluation of students achievement must be conducted in such a manner that discourages them from rote memorising the material. The assessment process should rather challenge the actual understanding of students by moulding their study habits.