How to develop study skills – or “Is it worth learning?”
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Hello. I thought I’d rapidly write up a blog post on studying. Study skills are probably the most important skills to develop at an early age, but it’s never too late to improve on this ability.
We all have a given level of study skills to begin with. Some find it easier than others, but thankfully the psychologists have been proved wrong, and it IS POSSIBLE to increase your IQ. So if you think you’re dumb, or ‘just not cut out to study stuff ‘ , well you can breathe a sigh of relief. Anyone can improve their personal study skills. Anyone.
I’ve helped children that have been let down by the school system for years, completely illiterate, learn the alphabet by heart in a few weeks, without any stress at all, just for the fun! And hence begin their ascent into the world of the written language.
I learnt the basics of study from one of the highest level philosophies on the planet, but I’m not going to overwhelm you with any complex language or ideas. Suffice it to say, that anyone can start right now from where he or she is at, and increase their ability to study.
There are three critical barriers to studying any subject, and you should know them to improve your study skills and they are :
1. Lack of mass
2. Too steep a study gradient
3. The misunderstood word.
Very briefly, 1. is covered by having the subject matter available while studying. If you’re learning about colour mixing, you’d need to have some colours to mix in order to be able to apply your knowledge. If you make someone study a subject without the subject matter at hand, it’s going to be very hard on him, and the subjects that have an absence of materials to study are often those with a high drop-out rate. If your learning about animals, go visit a zoo. Or about cars, go to a garage. The concept is simple. Get some real mass of the subject matter in your study environment to relate what you are learning about.
This is evidently very difficult when studying about astronomy, because you can’t get a star 4.2 light years away in the classroom! So a model or diagram or picture has to be substituted. But you get some mass. Like setting up a solar system on a football pitch to scale, for example, will really help students get a concept of the vast interstallar distances. It’s all about getting a correct quantity of real mass connected with the subject matter.
2. Too steep a study gradient is perhaps obvious. It’s when you try to learn advanced physics before you covered elementary level. But the same applies to any subject if you try to learn complex levels when the lower levels were not really understood.
The remedy for this phenomena of being completely confused by your last study assignment , is to go back to the previous level and really clarify what was not properly understood. If your learning is ‘more or less understood but a bit hazy’ it’s NOT understood. Clarify it.
3. The misunderstood word. This is the simplest study skills concept but the most deadly. Of course if you dont know what an angstrom (thanks wikipedia!) is you can just look it up (click the link) and find out. But words can be misunderstood in many different (13!) ways and you might have an incomplete definition, or an ‘invented’ definition for example. So your understanding can be blocked by you thinking you know the word (so you wouldn’t think of clarifying something that you already know!) except the definition that you have DOES NOT APPLY in the subject you’re studying.
The remedy for not accumulating words that you do not understand is of course to have access to good dictionaries and encyclopedias, but also glossaries and specialised dictionaries that cover the words used in the field of study itself. Science, medecine, music and art for example, all have their own special words that are obviously specialised, BUT there are often ordinary everyday words that have a SPECIALISED MEANING when used in those subjects. These everyday words can cause a person to stumble in their studies if the specialised definition are not readily available.
Clearing the definitions – a vital tool in your study skills
Being aware of the fact that words can be incorrectly ‘understood’ in this way can clear the way to finding these words and correctly clarifying them. See my other blog post on this subject. and get yourself a copy of “How to use a dictionary” by Hubbard. You’ll be a bunch smarter for sure if you do.
I’ll give you an example of the application of my personal study skills in everyday life.
I’m with a group of collegues at work and a subject comes up. Someone mentions it and another says ‘oh that’s about xyz’ right? And a vague sort of conversation about the subject ensues. As I’m not sure about what it is they are talking about, I open my internet browser to the wiki page on the subject and track a few of the referecnces , then rapidly scan the google search results so in about 3 minutes, I have more accurate referenced data at my fingertips than all the umms and “I thinks” that you can shake a stick at.
This is a way to improve your study skills rapidly get up to speed on a great number of subjects. Note that not everything written in the wiki is 100% correct, but that’s the beauty if the system, if there are controversies, they are pointed up, so you can cross reference any number of sources to get a wide view-point on any subject that is not totaly covered. Doing so will broaden your knowlege rapidly and enable you to understand more deeply a host of other subjects.
Of course, our own knowledge of certain subjects is ever-changing, and the internet is one way of being up to date on these subjects.
“Red and yellow pigments mixed in equal quantities will give you orange.” You can learn that, and apply it. But do that under moonlight, and it’ll look not a lot like orange…..so you’d have to add to your knowledge of red and yellow, ‘under a white light source _ like the sun…’ to accuratly understand your datum.
That’s another part of honing your study skills is to put into application what you have learned and see that it works that way. Then you’ll acquire certainty in your knowledge.
I hope this has given you some pointers in the field of study and perhaps some hope too! If you can read this blog, you can improve your study skills and you can learn anything that there is to know!
Jeremusic
jeremusic.com (My music and other delicious items….)