Reading Textbooks

Image courtesy of Mary-Lynn

Reading textbooks is very different from reading your favorite mystery novel. Naturally, the way you read a textbook will vary depending on how well you know the material already, and the Textbook Surveys you have performed should have started to show you how you can handle each of your books. Now it’s time to think about the actual process of reading a textbook.

When reading an assignment for a class, it is always important to take notes on that assignment. For some textbooks, outlining is an effective form of note-taking because the format of the book is very systematic. One problem with outlining, though, is that if you’re not careful, you could wind up copying sentences that look important rather than actually reading the material. The other main problem with outlining is that not everyone is good at outlining. Some people need a more structured way to take notes.

SQ3R

SQ3R is a method that combines reading and note-taking into one process, and also ensures that you are processing the material for future use.

• Survey – Before reading the chapter, look at the title, as well as subtitles and section headings and subheadings. If available, look at the chapter review questions and chapter summary. Glance at the first sentence of each section, but be careful to not read the chapter in depth at this point. Try to figure out what the chapter will be talking about, so you have a framework in your head as a starting point for reading.
• Question – For each section in the chapter, write a question based on the heading. For example, if the heading says “Women and the Ancient Greeks”, a good question would be “What was the role of women in the ancient Greek society?” Try to figure out what the section is going to be talking about, then create a question that addresses the topic. (This is why you read the first sentence of the section when you were surveying.) If you find later that your question doesn’t really address the topic of the section, feel free to change it so it does. Be sure to leave space between your questions to write answers in the next step.
• Read – Read the chapter. Write down and define any unfamiliar terms. Most importantly, answer your questions. Make sure your answer captures the essence of what the section was trying to say. If the section was about the family drama surrounding the first female Pharaoh in Egypt, and your question simply asked “Who was Thothmose II?”, then “he was her brother” is probably not an acceptable answer. In fact, the question should probably be amended to include “and why was he important” or something like that. This four-word answer does not address what the section was saying. It says nothing about how he was set up to take over the throne by people who didn’t want a female leader, and she was forced to marry him in order to exercise her leadership abilities. Another way to think about your answers is that they should summarize the section. When you have finished answering your questions, go back and make sure your answers are correct.
• Recite – This is the part where you begin to study what you have just read and make sure it is committed to memory. Read the questions and answers out loud to yourself as many times as it takes to remember them. Note that you do not need to remember them word-for-word, you just need to know the basic points. Get someone to quiz you, by asking you the questions, and checking to see that you can answer them.
• Review – Every night for as long as necessary (usually until you take the test or quiz, or until you are sure you will never forget the information), review your notes. Read them out loud again, get quizzed on them, or think about how this chapter relates to what you have learned since then. Always try to make connections to other things, since the brain doesn’t remember random facts easily. Connections help your brain to recall relevant information.

Your Own Survey Method

If you don’t like SQ3R for some reason, or it doesn’t seem to fit in with your learning style, feel free to add or subtract elements or completely redesign it to meet your needs. I had a student who preferred to read the chapter in-depth first, then skim it to take notes on it. If that works, so be it. Make sure that your method, whatever it is, includes taking notes while reading and reviewing the material in some way so that you know it.

Dealing With Test Anxiety

Previous: Grade Tracking

Image courtesy of programwitch

Many students get very nervous about tests and exams. Of course, this anxiety is usually due to a (possibly valid) fear that you are not prepared enough for the test. A few weeks ago, Michael’s guest post talked about preparing for tests. If you always feel that you could have been better prepared, refer to his post for advice.

However, if you do experience test anxiety, for whatever reason, keep reading.

Anxiety can be a detriment to your test-taking abilities just as much as a lack of preparation. Being too nervous before a test is very bad for your recall and memory. You are more likely to forget everything if all you can think about is how well you’re going to do.

Negative thoughts are even worse. Simply having a nervous feeling isn’t nearly as bad as thinking about how awful it will be if you fail this test, or how you really should have studied more.

How can you avoid negative thoughts? Stay away from other negative people. Don’t listen to the other people waiting to take the exam who are talking about how hard it’s going to be, and how they’re going to fail. In fact, I also don’t recommend cramming with other students. Don’t even listen to them if they are reviewing information for the test. First, cramming does no good for your brain, and second, your stress level will only increase. If you’re surrounded, put in some headphones and turn on some relaxing music. Or turn on some un-relaxing music if you have to drown out some of your fellow students.

One of the most obvious ways to be less nervous about a test is to study for the test. Make sure you’ve devoted enough time to process the information. Learn as much as you can, and have confidence that you’re as well-prepared as you can be.

Don’t ever cram right before a test. Don’t bring handouts to review. Don’t look through your book. Don’t glance at your notes. Don’t cram. It will only cause you to feel more stress, and may even confuse the information you already learned.

Along those same lines, don’t ever stay up all night studying for a test. Stop studying early enough that you can get a reasonable amount of sleep. Don’t think that the longer you study, the more you learn. In fact, your ability to process all that information decreases rapidly when you are tired, as does your ability to recall and express it during the test. Be sure you sleep.

What if you’re about to take the test and you’re still nervous? Try to relax. Breathe deeply. Think about something (anything) other than the test. Close your eyes and pretend it’s not happening. Remind yourself that you are prepared, and you will do fine. For some people, telling yourself that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t do well is helpful, but others should not even think of the possibility of doing poorly. Try to relax the muscles in your body. Ask a friend for a massage, even. (You can ask a stranger if you want, but they might look at you funny.)

If all else fails, see the image above.

Next: What’s Your Learning Style?

Tracking Grades

Image courtesy of joguldi

Previous: Types of Notes

In college, when you have questions about your grades, the professors are often unable to answer them. They are too busy, and have too many students to keep track of. It is your responsibility to keep track of your own grades, unless you don’t mind finding out how you’ve done in a class until the final grades are posted.

The easiest way to track all your grades is to set up an Excel spreadsheet with a sheet for each class.

In one column, write a descriptive name for every assignment. In the next column, you will write the grade you got on the assignment. It is very important to include zeros in this tally.

In the next column, write down (as a decimal) the amount that assignment is worth toward your final grade. If you know all the homework assignments are worth 20% of your grade, and there are 5 of them, then each is worth 4%, or .04 as a decimal.

In the last column, calculate your weighted grade for each assignment by multiplying the two previous columns.

Somewhere else on the page (you’ll only need one cell for this), add up all the grades in the last column. This is your average for the semester.

You can use this to see how different things will affect your final grade, as well as knowing your progress throughout the semester. For example, let’s say you want to know what the lowest grade is that you can get on the final and still have a B in the class. Start typing in grades for the final grade, and see what the lowest number is that still gets a B for the final grade.

There are other ways to set up the spreadsheet, of course, but the basic concept is that you multiply the grade on the assignment by how much it was weighted, and add up those numbers to get your final score.

Next: Test Anxiety

Types of Notes

Previous: Long-Term Projects 

Image courtesy of moonsong

Have you ever sat down in class, pulled out some paper, and stared at it, wondering how to write down all this information? Have you ever wondered if there is a right or wrong way to be taking notes? (The answer is no, by the way.) Do you simply scribble down everything the professor says, and then realize later that your notes have no semblance of organization to them?

Let’s talk about notes today. There are two main types of notes: traditional notes, and graphic organizers.

Traditional Notes

These kinds of notes are what students usually think of when they start taking notes in class. Typically done on a sheet of lined paper or on the computer, traditional notes are basically lines of text. There are, however, a couple of different formats to consider.

List

Many students just start writing down points in a list. For some situations, this may work. I prefer to still indent and use different kinds of bullet points, but the majority of my notes in class are a simple list style. If the professor is disorganized or hard to follow, this may be the best style of note-taking. (Also see graphic organizers below.) A good strategy would be to go back to those notes after class and see if there is a good way to reorganize them into an outline.

Outline

Strict outline-formatted notes are hard to do during a lecture, although they work very well when taking notes on a book. The outline format uses Roman numerals, letters, and numbers combined with indentation to show a hierarchy of ideas. Titles, headings, and subheadings in textbooks make it very easy to see the hierarchy, but most professors don’t teach with headings and subheadings. (Some Powerpoint-adept professors can actually incorporate this into their lessons, but it is usually still difficult to follow.) Outlines are great for reviewing your notes later though, as they force your brain to make the hierarchical connections itself.

Cornell

Cornell notes have both a way to find information quickly, and an incentive to review your notes later built in to their format. For Cornell notes, first draw a horizontal line about two inches from the bottom of the paper. Then draw a vertical line about two inches from the left side of the paper. In the large space remaining, take notes. Usually the list style works well for Cornell notes.

After class, review your notes. Find key words or points in your notes and write prompts in the two-inch area you marked off on the left side of the page. These can be questions that you might see on an exam, or just a key word that your notes define. Review these keys regularly, and make sure you can answer the question/define the term without looking back at your original notes.

On the bottom of the page, write down the main topics that the professor covered. Later, you can flip through the notes quickly, scanning the bottom of the page to find the one with the equation you need.

Summary

Writing summaries is another way to ensure that information has been recorded, and is especially useful in situations where you already know the material. Sometimes this can be in a class that is a referesher course of a previously-studied topic, and sometimes it can simply be when the professor reviews last session’s topic at the beginning of the day. Summarizing this topic allows you to make the connection to today’s lecture, so your brain will remember the new information better.

To summarize a section, find the main idea and the major supporting details, and write a paragraph including this information. Be sure your paragraph accurately describes the professor’s point. Also make sure that your summary does not include too much detail, or too little.

Graphic Organizers

Basically, a graphic organizer is a picture. It helps the brain connect information in new ways, which in turn helps retention.

Web/Mind Map

As I mentioned recently, I have just discovered how useful mind maps can be. Simply writing down words and thinking about how concepts are related to each other can be a useful study tool. The points should spider out from a main topic, getting more detailed the further away from the topic they are.

Venn Diagram

These are a very common graphic organizer, and can be seen everywhere from middle-school English classes to college-level Business courses. Venn diagrams are the ones with the interlocking circles. Each circle represents a concept, and the parts that overlap contain the similarities between the two concepts, while the other parts show the differences. Venn diagrams are very useful anytime a speaker mentions that something is going to be compared or contrasted.

Charts and Tables

General charts and tables have many uses for organizing information. The most common time charts and tables are seen in classroom notes is when the professor puts one up and all the students copy it down. Also try to keep an eye out for other information that would go well in a table or chart, and make one up yourself.

Flowchart

Flowcharts are seen often in the technology and business worlds, although they can be useful for many other things as well. They are used to show sequences of concepts. If something is happening in a certain order, then, show it with a simple flowchart. This can be as easy as drawing arrows from one phrase to the next. Your brain associates those arrows with direction, so it follows the order that you set forth.

As always, when taking notes in class, try to keep in mind that there may be a better way to organize the information. If you don’t have time in class to put them in that better-organized form, do it after class.

Next: Tracking Grades

Organizing Long-Term Projects

Previous: Exams

Image courtesy of interllectual

So you have this huge project that your professor has assigned, that will be due at the end of the semester. “Oh, that’s three months away,” you think. “I have plenty of time.”

The “project” that I’m referring to is anything that involves multiple steps, and is not due in the next two weeks or so. In college, this is typically a final, end-of-semester project. Whether your project is a research paper, a thesis, or a working model of the solar system, you should probably sit down and do some planning. Otherwise, three months from now, you could be sitting down at you computer thinking, “Ok, 12 hours til this thing is due. How much coffee does it take before I can move at the speed of light? Oh, right, 100 cups.” This line of thought will then lead to a desire to watch some Futurama before working on your project, which will lead to you repeating the conversation with yourself, although this time you’ll be jittery and the time will be 8 hours.

The big question, then, is:

How can I plan this project in advance, and prevent the otherwise inevitable all-nighter?

List Your Steps

First, sit down and write out all the steps that will be required to complete this project. Every single little thing that has to get done, has to be written down. If you need to pick a topic, that is a step. If you need to read a section of the text and then write a response to it, these are two separate steps. Writing a paper should be broken up into specific sections to write, and editing/revising should always be separate from writing. Try to make your steps as small and unintimidating as possible. This way, when you have to complete a step, it won’t be a big, scary one, and you will be less likely to put it off.

It’s sometimes helpful to write down what materials you will need for each step, so you know what to gather before beginning to work.

Pick Due Dates

Next, go find a monthly calendar, preferably one you actually use. Find the project due date, and count back two days. Write that day down as the due date for the project. (I find tricking yourself to be pretty effective. No better way to finish a project early than to think it’s due before it actually is.)

For each of your steps, figure out a reasonable amount of time that you will devote to it, and choose a due date based on that estimate. Write down a due date for each step. Don’t have two things due on the same day, and choose a process of completion that makes sense. Write down these self-created due dates in your planner, and on your monthly calendar.

Stick to Your Due Dates

The problem with these due dates is that there is no one else to enforce them. If you need someone to help with accountability, ask a friend to check up on your progress periodically.

Rather than finding ways to punish yourself for falling behind, think of incentives for doing well. Every time you complete a step, allow yourself some small reward. Take the time to enjoy something, without thinking about how you should be doing something else.

Because five minutes of relaxation is all you may get for weeks.

Next: Types of Note-Taking