Improving Memory and Study Skills

The Job Description in More Detail (p. 8-9)

Identify what a course requires. A student can expect to be successful only to the extent that they understand the professor’s objectives. The biggest clue to what a professor requires from students is the course syllabus. It provides a road map of where the professor wishes to take the students. A good sense of the direction the course is taking will enable you to better determine which parts of the course are important. It is important not to become so immersed in detail that the general direction of the course is missed. The sooner an overall picture of the course is gained, the sooner students do well on exams and term papers.

In-depth reading procedures. Simply turning the pages and reading the words on the pages is seldom sufficient for truly understanding the course material. Reading is best viewed as an active process. Rather than simply passively receiving wisdom, the essential points of the text have to be looked for. In the next section, we will supply you with some specific techniques to promote your understanding, retention, and ability to deal critically with the material you read.

Techniques for extracting meaning. A student has to do a large number of assignments from widely differing courses. It is impossible to memorize everything that a course presents, and indeed this is not necessary. Instead, the most important information should be extracted, which relates both to each specific assignment and to the more general objectives of the course. There are a variety of techniques discussed below that can be employed to extract the meaning from books, lectures, and other material, such as videos or sites on the Web. These techniques require actively sifting through the relevant information to find what must be known and understood.

The most valuable ability for meaning extraction is note taking. Most instructors will try to make just a few major points in a single class. Everything else serves to illustrate the key concepts (Van Locke, 1999). Therefore, developing the ability to recognize the major points of a lecture is important, and also the need for sufficient detail, so that the lecture notes can be later reconstructed.

Exam preparation. Most students dread examinations. Having taken an exam, many students are surprised to discover that they did not do as well as they had expected. After learning about the skills for exam taking described below, students will have less trouble preparing for exams. Examinations are usually designed to test the understanding as well as the recall of course material. Many instructors assume that students re- member the material to which they were exposed, and they want to see what the students can do with it. Can they construct answers to questions that they may not have encountered before? Preparing for an examination benefits from both an active approach and a continuing attempt to maintain an overview of the instructor’s objectives.

Exam strategies. Many students, who spend a considerable amount of time and energy preparing for an examination, dive into an exam and forge ahead without a plan. You will discover that you will do better on exams if you decide at the beginning how much time you will spend on each part of the exam.

Exams come in different forms, such as multiple choice exams and essay exams. The approach for dealing with multiple choice questions is quite different from that needed for essay questions. Later sections of this book offer specific advice for answering different types of exams. We encourage you to stay in control of your answers rather than letting the questions push you around.

Taking care of yourself. A student must be in good physical shape in order to do well when performing academic tasks. Variables that affect a person’s physical state include exercise, sleep, food, time of day, etc. It is important to keep track of your chemical consumption, such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, which can interfere with learning and remembering (Kolakowsky, 1997; Snel & Lorist, 1998).