Achieving academic success requires more than just attending lectures and classes. Your study habits play a crucial role in determining your performance, whether you’re a college or university student, high schooler, or secondary school student.
Unfortunately, many Nigerian students make mistakes in their study patterns that hinder their progress.
In this blog post, we will discuss some common study habits that yield minimal results and explore alternative approaches for better academic performance.
Rethinking Re-reading:
Re-reading is a popular study technique, but its effectiveness depends on the task at hand.
While re-reading can help memorize two-dimensional data like grammatical rules, formulas, and structural details, its impact on comprehension is less clear.
Researchers suggest distinguishing between mnemonic capacity (memory-based) and analytic capacity (comprehension-based) when deciding whether re-reading is necessary.
If regurgitating material is the primary goal, re-reading may be helpful, but if comprehension is the objective, it might be a waste of time.
Highlighting:
The Illusion of Understanding: Highlighting can be deceptive when it comes to understanding.
Without properly mapping the argument in a passage, highlighting can distort the intended meaning. Research indicates that highlighting often does little to enhance student performance, except in cases where students possess the necessary knowledge to highlight effectively or when dealing with difficult texts.
On more complex tasks, highlighting can actually hinder performance, requiring higher-order thinking and inference making.
To make highlighting effective, ensure it forms a cohesive bullet point summary of the passage rather than disjointed details.
Summarizing
Enhancing Retention and Comprehension: Summarizing is a valuable study technique, but it requires careful execution.
Simply restating a textbook chapter without grasping its central argument can lead to misrepresentation and logical inconsistencies, particularly at the higher education level.
Instead of providing your own verbal summary, strive for an interactive approach that engages with the material.
This can involve asking questions, creating concept maps, or discussing the topic with peers. Such activities promote deeper understanding and critical thinking.
Conclusion
To optimize your academic performance, it’s crucial to avoid ineffective study habits. Re-reading may aid memory retention but may not significantly enhance comprehension.
Highlighting, unless done thoughtfully, can distort meaning and hamper performance on higher-level tasks. Summarizing should involve active engagement with the material rather than simply regurgitating information.
By adopting more effective study habits and strategies, you can maximize your learning potential and achieve the academic success you desire.
Remember, studying is not just about spending time with your books; it’s about employing the right techniques and approaches that promote meaningful learning.