The Importance of Strong Study Skills - Literature review Example

Study skills Name of the Student: Name of the Instructor: Name of the course: Code of the course: Submission date: Table of Contents Table of Contents ii Introduction 1 Timetabling 1 Sourcing for information 3 Note taking and note making 4 Making meaning of acquired knowledge 6 Setting goals and meeting them 7 Conclusion 8 Works cited 9 Introduction The importance of strong study skills among high school students who are expecting to join institutions of high learning has become more popular in the recent times. This is based on the fact that majority of the students who acquire strong study skills in the course of their high school studies are bound to translate these skills in their advanced studies in colleges or universities which will make them more competent and successful. On the other hand, students who fail to acquire these skills as early as in the course of their high school studies are bound to experience extended difficulties in their advanced studies. Therefore, this reality makes the study skills among high school students to be central in determining their future academic life in colleges or universities. Against this background, this report will explore various components which are core to acquiring strong study skills among the high school students. These are timetabling, sourcing for information, the process of making meaning of acquired knowledge, note taking and note making as well as setting goals and meeting them. Timetabling According to Desai (461), timetabling can be defined as the act of allocating, subject to various constraints, of certain resources to the objects which are placed in space time in such a way that it will result to as close as possible satisfaction of a set of desirable goals and objectives. The aspect of timetabling is perhaps one of the most important areas while the students are seeking to enhance their study skills. This is based on the fact that timetabling aims at helping the students to effectively manage their time, both in and out of school. Thus, the students ought to learn that they are personally responsible for managing their time. The importance of timetabling among this group of students is because they have to allocate adequate time for various tasks that they are engaged in, for instance, the time they have to spend in in class, doing their homework or engaging in extracurricular activities. The importance of timetabling is based on the fact that majority of the high school students are often tempted to spend socializing with other peers, getting on the computers, going out among other non-academic activities. This makes it easy for them to forget about their responsibilities in school work which brings in the aspect of timetabling as an important segment in the acquisition of strong study skills. Thus, high school students ought to make personal timetables which are tailored to meet their specific tasks, both in and out of class. This is central in acquiring strong study skills in the sense that high school students are able to allocate the amount of time which they will spend in group works, personal study, completing assignments and consultation with their tutors among other activities. The continued use of timetable by these students will eventually spill over during their higher education in later years whereby even when they are confronted by tight schedules like a mix between careers and academic life, they will be in a position to effectively manage their time and attain maximum performance in all their undertakings. Sourcing for information There have been extensive recommendations that students in various fields of study ought to have extensive skills in evaluation, interpretation and comparison of information from different sources as well as construct their own interpretation about the materials which are provided in the classroom set-up by their tutors (Britt and Aglinskas, 485). This is more so with the current silent revolution which is taking place in modern academics. The importance of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) among high school students cannot be overemphasized, particularly with increased trends of acquiring academic information from online sources in different levels of academics. This is founded on the fact that ICT is currently being used for research purposes, for teaching and learning as well as networking in different institutions around the world. Thus, the internet has proven to be an integral communication channel for knowledge advancement including promoting research and development around the globe. Against this backdrop, high school students ought to enhance their capacity to source academic information from various sources, including hard copies from libraries as well as online sources and use it to enhance their academic knowledge. This is through understanding the most ideal method of sourcing information from these sources, assessing the credibility of this information and progressing to use it for various academic purposes. In addition, it is important to note that the students ought to have adequate knowledge in referencing these sources of information which they have used in their academic work. This is imperative in avoiding extensive plagiarism, mostly in their academic papers like essays. This competence is bound to be extensively useful in their latter academic life whereby they will use the skills of information sourcing while writing academic papers like thesis or dissertations in the course of their college or university academic life. Effective sourcing of information is thus a vital aspect in advancing the study skills among the high school students in the sense that it makes them to be in a good position, mostly when they are revising for their examinations and writing academic papers. The above fact is supported by Britt et al (2) who determined that research papers which are written by student can be extensively benefited by committing substantial amount of time in getting additional information as well as practice in sourcing and integrating information from various documents, whether from online sources or from hard documents. In this case, effective sourcing will advance the study skills among these students in the sense that it is bound to ensure that they have adequate skills in attending to the source of particular information and later make explicit citations when they are mentioning information from that particular document, whether in the course of their homework or during actual examinations. Moreover, this ensures that the students are able get more information in their various fields of study outside what is offered in the classroom by the teacher. This ensures that the students are able to gain more comprehensive knowledge in relation to their study areas and other complementary fields. This will enhance their study skills even when they have graduated from high school and proceeded to higher institutions of learning. Note taking and note making Effectiveness in note taking and note making in the course of classroom lectures is an essential study skill among high school students. This is based on the fact that it note taking ensures that these students have a permanent record of their class work. Moreover, note-making permits the students to have records of their revision as well as a register of the relevant points which they can later integrate in their writing or speaking if they have to make presentations in class. In addition, note taking helps the students in distinguishing where their ideal came from and how they think about these ideas as well as avoiding plagiarism while they are engaged in their academic writing undertakings. This is tied to the aspect of sourcing of academic information analyzed in the preceding section. Thus, taking and making good notes has been considered as an important study skills for high school students, mostly those planning to advance their academic goals. This is founded on the fact that while they are in high schools, these students are not used to taking as many notes as they will when they join higher institutions of learning like college or universities. Thus, despite the fact that these high school students are not able to write down everything that the teacher says, they have to be in a position to write the most important things in the course of various lectures. Therefore, high school students ought to have extensive knowledge about different note taking and note making techniques and choose which is the most applicable in their particular settings, for instance, annotations, diagrams, the analytical approach or even the transformative techniques which entails summaries and paraphrases among other techniques. All these note taking and making skills come in handy while the students are revising for their examinations or clarifying some aspects that they failed to comprehensively understand in the course of the classroom lectures. This is because effectiveness in note taking and making ensures that they clearly record what was taught in class, what they learnt in the course of their revision as well as information from other sources outside their course outlines. Therefore, the ability to take and make notes is a strong study skill among the high school students which will go a long way even in assisting them in future academic life. In addition, reviewing the acquired notes on a regular basis is another important aspect in the advancement of study skills among the high school students. This is based on the fact that there is often a big problem among this group of students in the sense that most of them tend to take and make comprehensive notes but proceed to forget about them until the test time. This eventually results in a tendency towards cramming which is not a good study practice and can result to bad test results. Therefore, teachers and parents ought to make extensive efforts to teach and advice the students to constantly review their class notes which will make them keep the materials that they have learnt fresh on their mind while at the same avoid dealing with information overload which is bound to occur when they are trying to cram too much information at the same time, mostly just before the examinations. This will ensure that they gain robust study skills not only in the course of their high school studies but also when they advance to higher institutions of learning later in life. Making meaning of acquired knowledge According to Luke and Freebody (cited in Yang and Wilson, 366) making meaning out of what a student learns in class is an essential reading/studying resource. This is whereby the students are endowed with the capacity of gaining comprehensive meaning out of what they have learnt either in the classroom setting or out of their information which they have acquired from other sources. This is important in ensuring that the students are able to apply what they have learnt in the classroom in various situational setting and thus gain comprehensive understanding of what they have learnt in class in the real world situation. This is exemplified in a situation whereby after the students have acquired knowledge in the classroom, they engage in real application of that knowledge which will make them get a clearer understanding of what they have studied in class. For instance, when second language learners have learnt new vocabularies in class, they can engage in the actual application of these vocabularies while socializing outside the classroom and engaging the native speakers of this language. In this way, these language learners will be in a position of gaining a greater insight into the contexts where these vocabularies are used and thus this will eventually give meaning to the acquired language skills and knowledge. Thus, making meaning out of the acquired knowledge becomes a vital part in the enhancement of the studying skills among this group of students. Setting goals and meeting them This is the last component of study skills which will be explored in this report.The art of goal setting and meeting these goals has been cited as being key in study skills among the high school students. This is whereby the students identify realistic academic goals which they have to meet at the end of a particular timeframe. Majority of the students fail to do well in their studies based on the fact that most of them often fail to set goals in the course of their study in terms of how they want to perform in particular subjects, improving in weak subjects as well as the overall performance when particular study periods come to an end. Thus, this translates to poor time allocation to specific tasks, for instance, increased revision of a subject in which the student is weak in and investing massive time in subjects which the students has utmost interest and performs well. As a result, the student ends up portraying poor outcomes in weak subjects which often affects his/her overall grades in the course of her high school life. This can go a long way in even affecting the admission process in higher institutions of learning. In addition, it is important to note that the goals which are sought by the students ought to be reasonable because setting studying goals which are too high will in most cases lead to frustrations and disappointment when these goals are not met. Thus, setting goals and meeting them becomes vital in the development of strong study skills among the high school students. Conclusion The above report has evidenced that strong study skills are important in determining the performance of high school students and even when they eventually get into institutions of higher learning. Some of the most integral aspects in the acquisition of these strong study skills include timetabling, sourcing for information, the process of making meaning of acquired knowledge, note taking and note making as well as setting goals and meeting them. All these are fundamental in the elevation of study skills among the high school students. Works cited Britt, Anne and Aglinskas, Cindy. ‘Improving Students’ Ability to Identify and Use Source Information’.Cognition and Instruction, 20.4 (2002): 485–522 Britt, Anne et al. ‘Using Intelligent Feedback to improve Sourcing and Integration in Students' Essays’.International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 1 (2005): 1-16. Desai, Nikita. ‘Preferences of teachers and students for auto generation of sensitive timetable: A casestudy’. Indian Journal of Computer Science and Engineering, 2.3 (2011): 461-465. Yang, Lianruiand Wilson Kate. ‘Second language classroom reading: a social constructivist approach’. The Reading Matrix, 6.3 (2006): 364-372. Read More