What Study Strategies Help Students Learn?

Learning strategies are used by students to help them understand information and solve problems. A learning strategy is a person's approach to learning and using information. Students who do not know or use good learning strategies often learn passively and ultimately fail in school. Learning strategy instruction

focuses on making the students more active learners by teaching them how to learn and how to use what they have learned to solve problems and be successful.

What Study Strategies Help Students Learn?

a.       Note-Taking

-          Paraphrase from actual statements

-          Positive     : This need some mental processing so more effective than simply writing down

-          Negative    : Need more time to think

b.      Underlining

-          Underlining or highlighting to some important words

-          Positive     : Easily find some important terms

-          Negative     : Most students fail to make decisions about what material is most critical. When student underline the one sentence they do retain more. Because deciding need a higher level of processing

c.       Summarizing

-          Writing brief statements that represent the main ideas of the informastion being read

-          Positive     : Student know what is important and what is not

-          Negative    : Retention or written material are not well understood

d.      Writing to Learn

-          Writing again what student understand with actual statement

-          Positive     : This condition help students learn the content they are writing about

-          Negative    : Sometime student’s statement near same but false because less of journal writing

e.       Outlining and Networking/Mapping

-          Outlining is representing the main points of material in hierarchical format

-          Mapping is diagramming main ideas and the connections between them

-          Positive     : Help student visually and force to remember material

-          Negative    : Limited

f.       The PQ4R Method

-          A study strategy that has students preview, question, read, reflect, recite, and review material

1.      Preview – Pay attention to major topics and subtopics

2.      Question – invent 5W+1H

3.      Read – Read according question that you posed prior to reading

4.      Reflect on the material – a. Relating with what you already know

  b. Relating to subtopics with major topics

  c. Trying to resolve contradiction with present information

  d. Trying to use material to resolve other material

5.      Recite – Practice remembering the information by asking and answering question

6.      Reviw – Actively review the material

-          Positive     : Focuses students on the meaningful organization of information and involves them in such as generation, elaboration, and distibuted practice

-          Negative    : Need more time to organize. This condition need consistency and intention