What Are Study Skills?
Learners need effective study skills to succeed in their studies.
To become a successful learner, you need an effective study plan. This uses study skills that will give you the best results. An effective study plan is one that will give maximum results with minimum input.
So what are study skills? A simple Wikipedia search says:
Study skills are an array of skills which tackle the process of organising and taking in new information, retaining information, or dealing with assessments.
We need to accept that these skills are concerned with information. From the above definition, we can see that there are three parts to study skills. It is concerned with:
- Organising and taking in new information.
- Retaining information.
- Using information to deal with assessments.
Now, let us take a look at each of these parts individually.
Taking In New Information
The process of taking in new information has the conceptual stage and the "physical" stage.
The conceptual stage comprises of the intiation of studying where one looks at the idea of studying, and then device strategies that they need to use to accomplish this mission. This includes, among others, drafting a study plan that sequences the subjects to be studied and the activities in between. An efffective study plan makes room for time for leisure. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
After the conceptual stage, comes the physical stage. Now that you have drawn a study plan, it is time to implement the plan by putting in the hours and actually following what is on the plan. To make it work, you will need to adopt study techniques that give you maximum grades or information at a minimum time. We will cover study techniques in another blog post.
Retaining Information
No one likes to study something and forget it after two days. Similarly, you do not want to start reading afresh in preparation for examinations.
In the same Wikipedia page, they explained that:
Study skills are learning techiniques that assist information retention or retrieval in the human memory.
The aim therefore, is to retain the studied material for a very long time. This can be assisted by applying techinques such as answering past exam papers or tests, and other techques like rote learning. You will learn more about these techniques in future blog posts.
Using information to deal with assessments.
Your progression depends mainly on how you perform in your examinations. It is therefore not surprising that dealing with examinations is added in your study skills.
The skills you need for examinations are a result of the skills you practice at home. This includes time management, information retrieval and comprehension, among others.
With regard to examinations, the Wikipedia definition further says:
Study skills are any skill which boosts a learner's ability to study, retain and recall information which assists in passing exams.